Michelle Téllez, PhD

2025 Distinguished Scholar Award

Dr. Michelle Téllez is an award-winning scholar and Associate Professor in the Department of Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona. 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), a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Latina/o Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2007-2008) and a Tucson Public Voices Fellow for the national OpEd Project (2017-2018).

Dr. Tellez co-edited The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolución (2019) and is the author of Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect (2021), winner of the 2023 National Association of Chicana/o Studies Book of the Year Award. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Mellon Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Arizona and California Humanities Councils. In 2023, she was named Researcher of the Year by the Women’s Foundation of the State of Arizona. As an interdisciplinary scholar, Dr. Téllez is uniquely situated in the fields of women’s, border, and ethnic studies - her work focuses on transnational community formations, mothering, and gendered migration along the U.S./Mexico borderlands. Her research contributes a distinctive lens into the border region that decenters border crossings and instead emphasizes the lives of border residents who are shaped and bounded by the border and who create meaning, community, and possibility through the exchange of culture, ideas and experience across lines.

Her work is both collaborative and community-engaged, her research methodologies diverse and wide-ranging, skills that extend her impact into innovative forms of public scholarship and digital humanities. As such, she has been invited to share her work both nationally and internationally. Dr. Téllez is a founding member of the Chicana M(other)work Collective and the Binational Artist in Residency project. She is on the editorial review board for Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, and was nationally elected to serve on the executive board of the National Association for Chicana/o Studies. Dr. Téllez has published in journals like Gender & Society, Feminist Formations, Aztlán, and Chicana/Latina Studies.