Becky Nicolaides is a historian specializing in American cities, suburbs, and metro areas. She earned her doctorate in American history at Columbia University, then served on the faculties at Arizona State University West and UC San Diego. Her work focuses on the history of North American suburbanization, especially histories of suburban diversity.

Nicolaides is the author of My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago 2002), The Suburb Reader 1st and 2nd editions (Routledge, 2006/2016), and The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945  (Oxford, January 2024). She has written for Time Magazine, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and various academic publications.

She has worked as a consultant over the years on historic preservation projects and various film projects. She is co-coordinator of the L.A History and Metro Studies group at the Huntington Library and subcommittee co-chair for Mayor Eric Garcetti's L.A. Civic Memory Working Group. Nicolaides has given numerous lectures and presentations at Princeton, UC Berkeley, UCLA, George Tech, University of Exeter, UK, Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany, Université Clermont Auvergne, France, and Palacky University, Czech Republic. She is an affiliated scholar at the USC Institute on California and the West. She is married to a brilliant actor-film producer-engineer and they reside in the suburban foothills of L.A. with their two kids and two dogs.