Marielys Burgos Meléndez

Former Media and Communications Manager

AfroBorikua dance researcher, communicator, educator, advocate, and audio describer currently pursuing a Phd in Critical Dance Studies at UC-Riverside. Marielys´artistic and scholarly work is framed through Social Justice practices, Decolonial Methodologies, and Intersectional Feminism. Since 2014, she investigates experiences, poetics and narratives of mobility, migration, and displacement. Since 2022, pole dance has taken over her life and research interests and she currently investigates labor, political economy, relationality, placemaking, and movement experimentation in erotic dance. She has served as administrator and communicator for the arts for over 12 years and has shared academic and artistic work throughout Europe and Latin America. In 2023 she was nominated for a Bessie´s Award for Outstanding Performance (Ensemble) and was a 2023-2024 Health Humanities and Disability Justice Fellow at UC-Riverside.

  • Artist in Residence
  • 2021 Artist in Residence
  • Faculty
  • 2019 Fall Festival Co-Curator
  • Critical Correspondence Contributor
  • Festival Spring 2024
  • MELT Faculty
  • Morning Class Faculty
  • Studies Project Organizer
  • Spring 2025 MR@Judson
  • Former Staff
Photo of Marielys Burgos Meléndez a looking into the camera. She is topless with her hands placed in front of her chest, thumbs almost touching and fingers extending pushing the palms outwards. Her arms are tattooed and the ocean in behind her. Photo by Kyle Kesses.
ID: Photo of Marielys Burgos Meléndez a looking into the camera. She is topless with her hands placed in front of her chest, thumbs almost touching and fingers extending pushing the palms outwards. Her arms are tattooed and the ocean in behind her. Photo by Kyle Kesses.