Professional Summary:
Melinda Lemke is an Associate Professor of Educational Policy at the University at Buffalo (UB), SUNY. She is the Director of the Education Leadership and Policy for Equity Minor, an interdisciplinary program, which aims to help undergraduate students critically engage global to local sociopolitical, cultural, and economic policy issues that contribute to (in)equities within schools and surrounding communities. She also is affiliated with the UB Alberti Center, Community for Global Health Equity, Gender Institute, and Honors College. Melinda is a feminist scholar who examines the politics of education, and how social policies address structural violence to center the health, well-being, and human rights of young women and girls. The first area investigates policy actor knowledge, discourse, and decision-making, while the second considers how power, ideology, and normative culture affect policy-making. Both areas rely upon interdisciplinarity and qualitative methods to examine causes, effects, and public sector responses to gender-based violence, structural trauma, and forced displacement. Melinda’s research and practice is shaped by a prior career in U.S. secondary public education and ongoing sexual assault prevention advocacy.

Education and Training:
PhD, The University of Texas at Austin, Educational Policy and Planning; Women's and Gender Studies Concentration
MEd, The University of Texas at Austin, Curriculum and Instruction; Government Concentration
BSED; BA; Minor, Bucknell University, Secondary Education; History; Law

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melinda-lemke-phd-ab631520/

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8425-6289

University at Buffalo: https://ed.buffalo.edu/about/directory/faculty/profile.html?uid=malemke