Anna Mester

As a program manager on the Public Engagement and Research Impacts team, Anna Mester manages the standalone workshop offerings, including equitable research partnership development with Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) and other campus partnerships. Mester also contributes to team-wide initiatives on the Public Engagement and Research Impacts team, particularly those involving capacity-building offerings and proposal development.

Prior to joining the Office of the Vice President for Research, Mester served as an Instructional Consultant with the Foundational Course Initiatives at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching where she facilitated collaborative course redesign teams to implement equity-focused and evidence-based instructional practices. Prior to that, she was a faculty member at UMass-Boston with a research agenda focusing on colonial carcerality in Hispanophone and Lusophone Africa. Her research was bolstered by the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Abroad Award and the Luso-American Development Foundation.  Along with her research, she immersed herself in ethical community-based learning and facilitated workshops in prisons in Michigan and Brazil. She also created a community-engaged course on oral histories of immigrants in the Greater Boston area, furthering her interest in knowledge produced by displaced and immigrant communities. She holds a B.A. in Romance Languages and Cultures and Critical Social Thought from Mount Holyoke College, and a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures with an African Studies concentration from the University of Michigan.