Colleen O'Neill received her B.A. from Pomona College, M.A. at New Mexico State University and Ph.D. in History at Rutgers University. She is particularly fond of crossing paradigmatic borders, most notably combining her interests in labor, gender and American Indian history in her new book, Working the Navajo Way: Labor and Culture in the Twentieth Century (University Press of Kansas, 2005). The Historical Society of New Mexico recently awarded this book the 2006 Gaspar Pérez de Villagrá Award for best historical publication (by an individual).
Her work has been recognized in a number of ways, including the Walter Rundell Graduate Student Award from the Western History Association in 1994, and the Gilberto Espinosa Prize for the best article published in 1999 in the New Mexico Historical Review. Her collection co-edited with Brian Hosmer, Native Pathways: American Indian Culture and Economic Development in the Twentieth Century was recently published by the University Press of Colorado (Fall 2004). She serves as the co-editor of the Western Historical Quarterly and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American Indian and U.S. Western History.