Professor Martha Ortega Soto trained as a historian at the School of History of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. At the Graduate Studies Division of the same Faculty, she obtained a Master's degree in Mexican History. She holds a Ph.D. in History from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) Iztapalapa Campus. She is currently a Professor at the UAM Iztapalapa Campus and is part of the Area of History of the State and Society and the Academic Group of World History.

Since she started in historical research, she has been interested in studying problems of colonization and the formation of European empires in modern times. She has studied the colonization of Siberia, Russian America, and Alta California. She has also investigated the history of the formation of the North Pacific as a regional space in the second half of the 18th century and in the 19th century. Her interest in the study of colonization processes has underpinned his participation with the Research Area of History and Historiography of the Department of Humanities of the UAM, Azcapotzalco Campus. In this area, she has developed in the line of Colonial Historiography. In 1997 she was a founding member of the Centro de Documentación Histórica Mtro. Jan Patula Dobek, specialized in World History. Since November 2016 she has been the coordinator of the Center.

She also cultivates research on the History of Science, in particular the history of Physics in Mexico. This line of research is linked to her participation in the rescue, organization, and description of the Archivo Histórico Científico Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, currently in the custody of the UAM Iztapalapa Campus. In 2016 she participated in the founding of Saberes, journal of the Association of Historians of the Sciences and Humanities in which she served as co-editor until April 2019 when she took the direction.

The diversity of topics that have awakened her academic curiosity has led her to focus on historical analysis from the definition of World History framed in macro-regions and long-term historical processes. She has also ventured into the work of rescuing archives in the custody of the UAM. Among his publications are several articles and books on the colonization and history of Alta California, Sonora, Alaska, the Russian empire and Mexico's participation in the global debate on the use of nuclear energy.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS
"Review: Between History and International Relations: Lothar Knauth 45 years of teaching on Asia at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, UNAM" in Saberes. Revista de las Ciencias y las Humanidades, vol. I, no. 2, Mexico City, July-December/2017, 2, 4 pp.
"Review: Destellos del cosmos. Biographical essay on Manuel Sandoval Vallarta" in Saberes. Journal of history of the sciences and humanities. Vol. 2, no. 5, January - June 2019, pp. 175-177.
Gonzalo López de Haro, navigator and spy. Based on Breve informe de Gonzalo López de Haro, Adaptation by Martha Ortega Soto, Mexico, Illustrations by Rossana Bohórquez, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa Campus, Departamento de Filosofía, 2019, 32 pp. (Collection: Déjame que te cuente, Serie: Clásicos Novohispanos).