About
Hola, my name is Eileen Michelle Gálvez, and I am a U.S. Salvadoreña, CentroAmericana, who grew up in the Crenshaw and Inglewood neighborhoods of Los Angeles. At sixteen, I moved to Texas, where I would spend ten years and consider all of these places home. I am a first-generation college graduate who grew up impoverished–a social classification that has shaped how I view world constructs. For over 15 years, I worked at various colleges and universities, with and for students. Most recently, I served as Assistant Dean & Directora of La Casa Cultural de Julia de Burgos at Yale University for over 9 years and stepped down to accept the 2024-2025 Yale Education Studies Research Fellowship, which allowed me to complete my dissertation research at Colorado State University. My dissertation, (In)Visibilities in the U.S. Imperial Academy: Central American Knowledge Production from Outside of Disciplinary Borders, is the First Place Winner of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) 2026 Outstanding Dissertation Awards and the 2026 Frantz Fanon Dissertation Award winner by the Decolonial, Postcolonial, and Anti-Colonial Studies in Education SIG (American Education Research Association). Co-constructed with participating faculty, it was designed as a study of epistemological resistance to the academy’s non-belonging of Central Americans. The results of this ethnographic research reveal practices within the academy that form scholarly hegemonies and document the epistemic resistance of Central American faculty who have been developing ancestral archival methodologies. The study is methodologically grounded and ethically guided by Monsignor Óscar Romero’s accompaniment teachings applied to research (Romero, 1979; Tomlison & Lipsitz, 2019; Abrego 2022).
Grounded in Critical University Studies, my interdisciplinary research examines colonial and imperial technologies of higher education and explicitly and politically centers the experiences, placemaking, and knowledge production of U.S. Central Americans and Isthmians. In my methodological explorations, I engage with Central American epistemologies, histories, and cultural practices of revolutionary storying.
As part of my commitment to uplifting Central American knowledge offerings, I have worked to support, develop, and promote the writing and intellectual projects of Isthmians through four years of co-founding and leading the Central American & Isthmian Writers Collective, as well as co-founding and co-chairing the Central American Futurities Conference.
My various interests and inquiries are fueled by my neurodiversity, which I embrace by nurturing my inner creative in various forms, including design, storytelling, and photography–check out some of my work below!
Eileen Michelle Gálvez, Ph.D.
