Tessa Ong Winkelmann hails from southern California, specifically the Coachella Valley. She received her bachelor's degree at the University of California, Irvine(2005), her M.A. in Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University (2008), and her doctoral degree in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2015).  

Her research interests are in the fields of U.S. in the world, empires and imperialism, ethnic studies, and gender and sexuality studies.  In 2011 she was a Fulbright scholar in the Philippines, where she completed research for her dissertation and book manuscript tentatively titled, “Dangerous Intercourse: Race, Gender and Interracial Relations in the American Colonial Philippines, 1898 – 1946.” Her book project utilizes a transnational approach to examine a wide range of interracial sexual relationships -from the casual and economic to the formal and long term- between Americans and Filipinos in the overseas colony from 1898 to formal independence in 1946. 

At UNLV she teaches courses on U.S. Foreign Relations, and Women and Gender history in a global perspective.  She also hopes to offer an Asian American history course in the future.