Mirelsie Velázquez, associate chair and associate professor of Latina/Latino studies, has been elected to leadership of the Puerto Rican Studies Association, an academic organization dedicated to the study of Puerto Rico and its people, both from the islands and its broad diasporas.
She'll serve as vice president from 2027-28, before serving as president in 2029-30. She currently serves on the executive committee of the association as an at-large representative.
Velázquez is interdisciplinary scholar whose work centers the history of education, women's history, Puerto Rican studies, gender and sexuality, and teacher education. Her award-winning book, Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977 (University of Illinois Press 2022), chronicles the Puerto Rican community’s response to the urban decay in which they were forced to live, work, and especially learn.
She’s currently working on her second book, Genealogies of Empowerment and the Makings of Home: Latina/o Activism at the University of Illinois, 1970–1992, and an oral history project, “De Isla a Chicago: Stories of Puerto Rican Teachers, 1970-1990,” that collects oral histories of Puerto Rican educators who were recruited to work in Chicago in the 1970s to serve the needs of a diverse student population.
She was recently awarded an Op-ed Project Public Voices Fellowship. Last year she was named a Conrad Humanities Scholar, received a Campus Fellowship from the Humanities Research Institute, and a Campus Research Board Grant. She also contributed an essay to the exhibit catalog for Aquí en Chicago at the Chicago History Museum, wrote the preface to Shifting the Lens in History Education: Centering Racial and Ethic Knowledge in the Classroom, and contributed the essay "Critical Historical Methodologies" to Critical Qualitative Research and Social Justice: Key Concepts in Qualitative Methods.
Several other faculty members in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies also serve in leadership positions within professional organizations in their fields. Professor Natalie Lira serves as secretary on the Executive Council of the Latina/x/o Studies Association and on the Board of Trustees for the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. Professor José A. de la Garza Valenzuela is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Chicana and Chicano Literatures, Languages, and Culture Forum for the Modern Language Association. Professor Gabriela G. Corona Valencia is vice president of the Southwest Oral History Association. Professor Aja Y. Martinez serves on the Exemplar Award Committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and will serve on the Modern Language Association Delegate Assembly as the History and Theory of Rhetoric Seat for 2027-2030.