Magda was born in Nogales, Arizona but she calls Tucson, Arizona her home. 

Magda is interested in the ways marginalized communities and social movements mobilize cultural heritage resources to meet their contemporary needs, commemorate difficult pasts, and produce social change. Her current research explores how unauthorized, clandestine migration along the Arizona-Sonora (U.S.-Mexico) borderlands are commemorated and memorialized by immigrant advocacy groups. 

Magda's Master's thesis in Applied Anthropology investigated how the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trail (National Park Service) uses its cultural heritage resources to civically engage the Latina/o resident of Tucson, Az. Her thesis found that Latina/o residents of Tucson were familiar with segments of the Anza Trail, but they very seldom associated it with the National Park Service or the national landscape more broadly. Recommendations for bridging the gap between local and national understandings of the Anza Trail were provided.

Other research interests: cultural heritage making processes, archaeological-ethnography, museums, rhetoric of social movements, U.S.-Mexico immigration history