Melissa Barthelemy is an educator with a background in law, history, and gender & sexuality studies. She applies social justice values to all aspects of her life, including her work in student affairs and public history. She is an award winning curator, with extensive experience in project management and event planning. She has over 20 years of experience in higher education.

Melissa has presented widely at national conferences, such as NASPA, NCORE, NCPH, and SAA, on the topics of proactive responses to free speech community controversies and campus responses to violence. She is nationally recognized as an expert in condolence archives and rapid response collecting efforts, that document history as it unfolds. As a public speaker, she delivered the keynote address at the Nevada Museum Association's Annual Conference in 2018 and has been interviewed by numerous media outlets.

She is currently a doctoral candidate in public history at UCSB, and a 2019-2020 fellow for the UC National Center on Free Speech & Civic Engagement. She holds a J.D. from Golden Gate University School of Law, an M.A. in History from San Francisco State University, and a B.A. from University of California, Santa Cruz.

For more information and CV, please visit UCSB History Department Profile or LinkedIn Profile

All photography provided and copyrighted by Bennett Barthelemy, unless otherwise noted.