Annie Zean Dunbar is a researcher, educator, social worker, and artist.
Her research interests include racial identity formation, trauma and reconciliation, mutual aid and community care, and long term refugee and (im)migrant resettlement organizations in the United States. Zean’s creative writing centers community conceptions of truth and omission, the liminal space between understanding self and others, and an examination of memory. She is a co-founder of Interstitial Media Arts (IMA) a creative consulting firm and Connect-the- Dots, an arts-based organization focused on examining social constructs and human connection.
Zean received her doctrate from the Graduate School of Social Work at the University of Denver. She received her Masters from the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice at the University of Chicago with a program of study in International Social Welfare. Annie Zean is a 2014 Fellow of the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights at the University of Chicago, and holds a certificate in Forced Migration from the Center for Refugee Studies at York University.
She was the Social Media Lead for the Emerging Scholars and Practitioner on Migration Issues (ESPMI) Network. Zean would describe herself as a post-goth black woman, perpetual optimist, with an affinity for commas, sing-alongs, and referential humor.