Matthew Butler is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his Ph.D. in Latin American History from the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom in 2000 and has taught at UT Austin since 2008. His research focuses on modern Mexican history, with particular emphasis on religion, politics, and Indigenous communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
He is the author of Mexico’s Spiritual Reconquest: Indigenous Catholics and Father Pérez’s Revolutionary Church (University of New Mexico Press, 2023) and co-editor of México y el Concilio Vaticano I (Universidad Pontificia de México, BUAP, 2024) and Tras las tierras comunales indígenas: Los libros de Hijuelas y el liberalismo decimonónico en Michoacán (CIESAS, LLILAS, UMSNH, Colmich, 2023).
Dr. Butler has published widely in leading journals, including Historia Mexicana and Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México, and has contributed to numerous edited volumes. His extensive record of mentorship includes supervising more than a dozen doctoral students, and he has secured over $150,000 in research funding. He currently serves as editor of Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos (2025–2030) and president of the Texas Catholic Historical Society (2023–2025).
