Melissa M. Forbis is a cultural anthropologist with a research focus on social movements, indigenous rights, gender, and the state.  Her long-term research with the Zapatista movement examined the process of constructing territorial autonomy, gendered struggles, state violence, and relationships with non-Zapatista solidarity activists. Her publications on gender, Indigenous rights, the Zapatista movement, and settler colonialism have appeared in the U.S., Mexico, and Chile. She recently guest edited the “Protest” issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly, and is currently working on an edited volume, Strong A(s) Feminist: Power in Strength Sports, which was workshopped and presented at a conference at the University of Notre Dame October 25-26, 2021. Her decades-long community work spans issues such as sexual violence and immigrant rights, including working with lawyers to provide expert testimony in asylum cases. Her previous positions include Visiting Scholar at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU, Stony Brook University (Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies and Sociology) and Rice University (Postdoctoral Fellow Women’s and Gender Studies).