Michelle Téllez
Dr. Michelle Téllez, an interdisciplinary scholar trained in Community Studies, Sociology, Chicana/o Studies and Education, has been committed to mapping projects of resistance, exploring shared human experiences and advancing social justice for the last 25-years. Her public and academic scholarship focuses on transnational community formations, mothering, and gendered migration along the U.S./Mexico borderlands. She co-edited The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolución, published in March of 2019 and is the author of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect published in September 2021 by the University of Arizona Press.
She has a long history in grassroots organizing projects, digital media and community-based arts and performance. A founding member of the Chicana M(other)work Collective and the Binational Artist in Residency project, she also is on the editorial review board for Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social and Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies.
A graduate of UCLA (B.A, 1996), Teachers College, Columbia University (M.A, 2000) and Claremont Graduate University (Ph.D., 2005), Dr. Téllez was a dissertation fellow in the department of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2004-2005) and a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Latina/o Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2007-2008). She was a 2018 Tucson Public Voices Fellow and 2021 UA Provost Author Support Fund awardee. In 2022, she was awarded two Mellon Funded Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative Grants for new work on Afro-Chicanx communities and Mexicana/Chicana activists in the borderlands.
Dr. Téllez taught at Arizona State University for eight years and Northern Arizona University for two; while at NAU she created and directed the Beyond Boundaries Initiative - a campus-community collaboration rooted in decolonial praxis, identity, and community formations across multiple borderlands. She has been at the University of Arizona since 2016 and has served as faculty fellow for the Guerrero Student center and as advisor to other student groups. You can find out more about her work at: www.michelletellez.com.