mei bowyer, MEd, is a doctoral student in the College of Education at the University of Maryland with certificates in museum scholarship and material culture (MSMC) and digital studies in arts and humanities (DSAH). mei applies compositional inquiry to examine how expression, matter, and place teach, heal, and hold us.
2025. Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon) Community Fellow, Cal State Fullerton.
2025. 1856 Project, Reparative Histories Social Justice Research Incubator Fellow, University of Maryland.
2024. Curriculum and Instruction (EDCI) Fellow, University of Maryland.
2024. Dean’s Fellow, University of Maryland.
2026. Archie Green Student Travel Award, Public Programs Section of the American Folklore Society.
2025. Digital Humanities Summer Award, Cal State University Fullerton Department of History.
2024. Hands-In-Clay Scholarship, Baltimore Clayworks.
Liu, R.Z., Conley, C., Johnson, A.C., bowyer, m., and Ramirez, G. (Forthcoming). The stories of our communities and the storytellers who tell them: The case for critical race folklore studies. In Z. You & M. Martínez-Rivera (Eds.), Routledge handbook of anthropology & folklore. Routledge.
Grants:
2025. Mellon Sawyer Seminar Summer Grant. Georgetown University x Mellon Foundation.
2025. Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium Grant. DEFCON x Mellon Foundation.
2024. Arts for All ArtsAMPlification Graduate Student Research Grant. University of Maryland, College Park.
Installations:
2026. "in-to-mi-ii-see: repair beings with intimacy." Imagining America Annual Gathering, Davis, California.
2026. "grounding: a black indigenous imagination." American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Asheville, NC.
2026. "our new worlds: envisioning, stretching, persisting." The Phillips Collection Teacher Institute, Washington, DC.
2025. "sounding: dark matter." American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA.
Presentations:
2026. Panel titled, "Black epistemologies: the (re)construction of knowledge through food, art, and spirit." Avery Symposium, Charleston College, Charleston, SC.
2025. Talk titled, "the black arts school." Mellon Sawyer Seminar, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
2025. Workshop titled, "sounding: dark matter." American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA.
Projects:
2026. Participant, "Studio Practice as a Tool for Cross-Curricular Critical Thinking," Professional Development at The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.
TLPL 252: Students, Schooling, and Communities
TLPL 251: Community, Learners, and Classroom Climate
TLPL 332: Arts Integration in Elementary Classrooms
TLPL 481: Embracing Diversity in the Classroom Community