she/her

Director, Belonging & Engagement

Institutional Equity and Belonging

Nancy Ríos is a Chicana scholar from the Chicagoland area.  A proud daughter of immigrants from Zacatecas, Mexico, Nancy is a first-generation college graduate and is union- and community-made. She earned her BA in Anthropology from The University of Illinois at Chicago and her MA and PhD in Anthropology from The University of Texas at Austin. She has been a part of the Colorado Springs and Colorado College Community since 2011. At CC, she has taught in Anthropology; The Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies; Feminist and Gender Studies; Liberal Arts in Correctional Facilities Initiative; Race, Ethnicity and Migration Studies; Spanish and Portuguese; and Stroud Scholars. With a deep commitment to seeding and building a more equitable and just world, her research/scholarship/engagement interests include feminist theory and praxis, race and identity, muralism, cultural production, social movements, artivism, liberatory design, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. She has cocurated art exhibitions at Museo de las Americas and the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. Most recently she served as co-director of the justice-driven CC Mobile Arts project. Through this work, she has worked to build community and connection through the arts in Colorado Springs and at Colorado College, while also creating space for CC students to become critical cultural workers. She currently serves on the Art on the Streets Committee, a standing committee of Colorado Springs’ Downtown Ventures that works to carry out public art initiatives. She is a mama of two and loves creating, traveling, running, dancing, art, culture, and Mexican Chicago.