Donna Mejia

Donna Mejia is Associate Professor and Interdisciplinary Librarian for Inclusive Studies. In this role, she facilitates efforts to build inclusive educational pedagogies and organizational structures and practices. She is a Faculty Fellow with the Renée Crown Wellness Institute and is also affiliated faculty for Women & Gender Studies, Ethnic Studies and the Center for Teaching & Learning.

Donna was honored to serve as the Inaugural Chancellor's Scholar of Health and Wellness from 2021—2024. She was the first tenured faculty globally for Transcultural Fusion Dance (TcFD), a hybrid tradition that dialogs dances of the African and Arab Diasporas with American Hip Hop and Contemporary Dance. Her scholarship, performances and advocacy work in TcFD created a cascade of decolonization actions and language in the genre, resulting in a 2021 Legends of Dance Award by the Carson Dance Library, and the 2022 CU President's DEI Award for Faculty. Donna's scholarship merging the study of cultural retention, colonial imperialism, gender representation and digital globalization received the 2011 Selma Jean Cohen Fulbright Honor for International Dance Scholarship.

Her numerous interdisciplinary research and service projects include collaborative programming with her research partner Dr. Valerie Joseph on Grounded Knowledge Panels to aid communities in addressing impactful, charged and complex topics, ongoing development of the Fumble Forward Framework she originated for communication and learning (View her 2024 TEDx talk), partnering with the Also Our Campus Research Lab under Dr. Chelsea Kilimnik to reduce and address both identity and sexual/intimacy harm, and serving and sharing as teaching faculty in the Mindful Campus program and as contributing faculty for the Dalai Lama Fellows Program.

For more information about her publications, performances, awards and endeavors, please visit: https://donnainthedance.com/