Yasmina Martin is a PhD student at Yale University studying 20th-century South African history. She is fascinated by histories of decolonization and political protest. At Yale, she serves as a teaching assistant for one undergraduate history course each semester and leads seminar discussions among students. Prior to Yale, Yasmina completed a Fulbright research project in Johannesburg, South Africa; worked as a paralegal for the Legal Aid Society; and taught 10th and 11th-grade history in New York City public schools.

Yasmina Martin has several years of experience privately tutoring French, writing, US history, and World History at the middle and high school levels. Her varied experiences have helped her gain skills in developing strong research questions, cultivating primary sources for historical work, and developing historical arguments. Along with her graduate school work, Yasmina serves as a volunteer English-as-a-learned-language tutor for Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, a refugee resettlement agency in New Haven, Connecticut.

Yasmina’s love for history began in high school, where she had inspiring and supportive World History and US History teachers. Her teachers taught her how to analyze primary sources and draw conclusions from historical material, skills which she still uses every day in her research concerning African processes of decolonization and liberation movements. As a tutor and teacher, Yasmina Martin aims to create a student-centered environment allowing students to make their own historical connections between past and present and develop rigorous research questions on their own. She believes that history is critical for understanding the processes which have shaped the world around us, and it continually illuminates so much about the everyday. She is committed to working with students as they gain the skills necessary to become excellent historical thinkers and writers.

Along with her expertise in history, Yasmina Martin majored in French and Black Studies at Amherst College—where she graduated from in 2014—and studied in Paris during the fall of 2012. She has tutored French to middle and high school students in the New York City area and is eager to assist students in developing their French grammar, writing, speaking skills.