Marleen Villanueva

Biography

Marleen Villanueva (Pame - Chichimeca) is an Indigenous feminist scholar whose work is guided by relationships with Indigenous communities, lands, and waters. She is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) at Stony Brook University. Her scholarship grows out of long-term community collaborations focused on storytelling, water protection, and cultural revitalization. Through this work, Marleen centers Indigenous feminist ways of knowing grounded in kinship, care, reciprocity, and responsibility to more-than-human relatives.

Publications

• Muñoz, M., Montes, P. & Villanueva, M. (2025). Yanawana Pedagogies: Learning with Coahuiltecan Water Teachings. In Vol. 4 No. 1: Women and Water: The Flow of Matriculture of Matrix: A Journal for Matricultural Studies.
• Nxumalo, F., & Villanueva, M. (2020). (Re) storying water: Decolonial pedagogies of relational affect with young children. In Mapping the Affective Turn in Education (pp. 209-228). Routledge.
• Nxumalo, F., & Villanueva, M. (2020). Listening to water: Situated dialogues between Black, Indigenous and Black-Indigenous feminisms. In Transdisciplinary Feminist Research (pp. 59-75). Routledge.
• Nxumalo, F. & Villanueva, M. (2019). Decolonial water stories: Affective pedagogies with young children. Planet Texas 2050-Published Research.