Vanessa E. Anthony-Stevens

Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, University of Idaho

Curriculum and Instruction

identity

language

place

coloniality

K-12

higher education

Indigenous educational sovereignty

tribal nation building

Biography & Scholarship

Vanessa Anthony-Stevens holds a PhD in Language, Reading and Culture from the University of Arizona. She is an Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Studies in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Idaho. She the Principal Investigator and Director of Indigenous Knowledge for Effective Education Program (IKEEP), a program to prepare educators to lead in K-12 schools and tribal community-driven education. Vanessa's research is grounded in collaborative, action-oriented, and Indigenous informed methods. She explores intersections of identity, power, and place in contexts of institutionalized education. She specializes in issues of Indigenous educational sovereignty and university-community partnerships. Vanessa's work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Spencer Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, among others. She has published widely in journals such as the Journal of American Indian Education, Cultural Studies of Science Education, The Rural Educator, and the Journal of Teacher Education. She was awarded the Dr. Arthur Maxwell Taylor Excellence in Diversity Award for faculty in 2022 an the President's Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award in 2024.

Prior to joining the University of Idaho, Vanessa served in Americorps (Jacksonville, Florida, and Baltimore, Maryland, 1999-2001) and the U.S. Peace Corps (Paraguay, 2002-04). She taught upper elementary and middle school grades in the State of Arizona (2004-10). While at the University of Arizona, she was coordinator and co-Principal investigator of a Project SEED, a professional development program for Indigenous elementary educators from Mexico (2010-14).

Vanessa is married to Dr. Philip J. Stevens and is the mother to two daughters who are proud members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe. She is an avid sports fan and enjoys playing and watching many team sports. She is fluent in English and Spanish, has intermediate proficiency in Guarani, and emergent ability in Western Apache.

Links

Indigenous Knowledge for Effective Education (IKEEP)

Center for Interdisciplinary Indigenous Research and Education

Organizational Affiliations

Associate Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, University of Idaho

Member, Center for Interdisciplinary Indigenous Research and Education, College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, University of Idaho

Director, Indigenous Knowledge for Effective Education Program (IKEEP), Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, University of Idaho

Highlights - Output

Book

Indigenous Language Education in Critical Times: Voices of Community Reclamation in the Americas

by Julieta Briseño-Roa, Paulina Griñó, Vanessa Anthony-Stevens and José Antonio Flores Farfán

Published 07/15/2025

This book builds a space in which a diversity of voices – Indigenous teachers, activists and committed academics – are foregrounded in the processes of Indigenous education with the goal of Indigenous language reclamation. It decenters state systems of education (e.g. schooling) and instead considers the efforts of teachers (defined broadly), community activists and scholars who are developing initiatives to support Indigenous language practices in, around and beyond schooling, thereby emphasizing diverse processes of language reclamation in complex and varied settings. The authors invite the reader to reconsider language reclamation in the face of climate change and neocolonial exploitation, offering a source of radical hope for the future. Central to the book are narratives regarding community-based collaborations, which subvert the asymmetrical power relations between academia and educational practitioners and activists, and call into question the categories constructed by a top-down approach, as well as the colonial relationships that linguistic anthropology and linguistics have constructed within the spaces and people they ‘study’.

Education

Language, Reading and Culture

2013, PhD, University of Arizona

Language, Reading and Culture

2008, MA, University of Arizona

Sociology

1999, BA, Marquette University

Global ID

0000-0003-4326-771X