Michelle Salazar Pérez

Dr. Michelle Salazar Pérez is the Velma E. Schmidt Endowed Chair for Early Childhood Education & Professor of Early Childhood Studies at the University of North Texas. Her past and current scholarship addresses early childhood policy reform, historical and contemporary constructions of childhood/s, teacher education, and critical qualitative methodologies. Her work has been published in Teachers College Record, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, Equity & Excellence in Education, the Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, Qualitative Inquiry, and Review of Research in Education. She has co-edited several special issues and books, including The SAGE Handbook of Global Childhoods. Recently, she was Co-PI of a Spencer Foundation Vision Grant, with colleagues Dr. Fikile Nxumalo (PI) and Dr. Mere Skerrett (Co-PI), entitled Enacting sustainable futures in early childhood education: Transforming educational systems in relation with living lands, waters, and languages across global contexts. Her recent work has also been focused on childcare advocacy and collaborating with doctoral students who have a range of interests in critical childhood studies.

Dr. Pérez was the recipient of the 2020, AERA Mid-Career Award, from the Critical Examination of Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Gender in Education SIG. She was the Host Chair of the 27th international Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Education (RECE) conference in 2019, and the Chair of the AERA Critical Perspectives on Early Childhood Education (CPECE) SIG in 2018.

​Dr. Pérez earned her Ph.D. from Arizona State University and her master's and undergraduate degrees from Texas A&M University in College Station. Prior to her appointment at the University of North Texas, she was a tenured Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at The University of Texas at Austin. She spent seven years at New Mexico State University, where she held the J. Paul Taylor Endowed Professorship, co-founded the Glass Family Research Institute for Early Childhood Studies, was Co-PI of a Head Start and Kellogg grant, and served as Interim Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education.

• "Enacting Sustainable Futures in Early Childhood Education: Transforming Educational Systems in Relation with Living Lands, Waters and Languages across Global Contexts"