She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Maryland-College Park in 2013. Her research has focused on the historical connections between criminality, class, youth and state formation in modern Mexico and cultural histories of juvenile crime. She has written on the history of "at-risk" youth, criminal photography, and is working on a book project that examines eugenics in Latin America in the early twentieth century. Orisich teaches undergraduate courses in Colonial and Modern Latin American History, Twentieth Century Revolutions in Latin America, Cold War History in Latin America, Latin American Popular Culture, State Terror and Political Violence, and the History of Science, Medicine, and the Body. She integrates high-impact learning practices in her courses, including innovative pedagogies such as historical role-playing games and self-regulated learning.