Dr. Ed A. Muñoz was born in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and was raised in Gering, Nebraska. His family is primarily from Texas. His paternal grandmother immigrated to the US during the Mexican Civil War, and subsequently his father was born in Catarina, Texas. His mother was born in Central Texas, specifically Manchaca, Texas, and her family has a long history of being from that area. Dr. Muñoz identifies as a Chicano, but also as a Nebrasqueño por rumbo de Tejas, which translates to “Native Nebraskan by way of Texas.”

Dr. Muñoz’s parents met in the Nebraska panhandle during their late teens and fell in love. His mother became pregnant with his older sister as a teen, and married his father shortly thereafter. Dr. Muñoz's father didn’t make it past the seventh grade because he was administratively pushed out for not attending the last two weeks of school due to his family traveling north to work in the Wisconsin fields, and before they eventually settled in Nebraska, where they worked in the sugar beet fields.

In high school, Dr. Muñoz was an honor roll student, participated in choir and theater, in which he lettered, and played football, also earning a varsity letter. It was his experiences working in the sugar beet fields, combined with his mother's encouragement, that motivated him to pursue higher education.

After high school, Dr. Muñoz attended the University of Nebraska, where he experienced intense culture shock and dropped out during his third semester. He ended up staying out of school for seven years, doing union, blue-collar work, before eventually returning to community college.

While in community college, Dr. Muñoz found he loved sociology as a field of study. He found that it reflected a lot of his lived experiences, especially his experiences with discrimination. While in high school, Dr. Muñoz was arrested at gunpoint and later strip-searched by police for being a minor in possession, which stuck with him as a significant moment. This and other interactions with the criminal justice system, has inspired Dr. Muñoz to continue researching and understanding Latinx criminal justice experiences.

Through the support of his professors, he was encouraged to apply to graduate school and the Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. He was awarded the fellowship and eventually graduated from the University of Nebraska with his PhD in Sociology. He currently works at the University of Utah as an associate professor of Ethnic, Gender & Disability Studies