UNM Division for Change and Empowerment

Dr. Assata Zerai (she | her) serves as Vice President and Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico. At the helm of the Division for Change and Empowerment, she plans for, resources, and documents inclusive excellence at UNM. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, her intellectual home from 2002-2019. Zerai is co-founder of the Feminist Decoloniality as Care (FEMDAC) transnational network, a scholarly consortium dedicated to mentorship for early career faculty in the United States and South Africa. She has published six books and numerous articles in academic presses spanning multiple topics including educational equity; maternal and child health; African women’s access to safe water, sanitation, and mobile technology; and making the work of marginalized scholars more accessible. During her Fulbright-Hays research abroad fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand, Dr. Zerai wrote Black Feminist Interventions to Decolonize the Westernized University (2025).