Bio

Cristina S. Méndez (she/ella) is a Chicana educator, scholar, and poet who was born and raised in the East Bay, California (Muwekma Ohlone Territory). Through her research, collaborations, and poetry, Cristina is committed to centering Indigenous, feminist, and decolonial epistemologies and methodologies. Cristina engages in collaborative research with Maya Mam community members on designing pedagogical resources for language reclamation and follows the work of Maya Mam women who are leaders in these movements. She examines how revitalization movements offer the potential for coalition-building and pedagogical innovations for a decolonial future. 

Cristina was formerly an elementary school teacher and worked as an aide in preschools across California’s Central Valley and Bay Area regions. She received her B.A. in Rhetoric with honors and a minor in Education from UC Berkeley and her M.A. in Urban Education from Loyola Marymount University with a concentration in Policy and Administration. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in Education: Critical Studies of Race, Class, and Gender with a designated emphasis in Indigenous Language Revitalization.

She was an American Education Research Association (AERA) Minority Dissertation Fellow (2024-2025) as well as a Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color Fellow with the National Council for Teachers of Education (NCTE) (2024-2026). Her work can be found in English, the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, and the Journal for Multicultural Education.