Heather Ireland

Dr. Heather Montes Ireland is Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at DePaul University in Chicago USA, where she is also affiliated faculty in the Critical Ethnic Studies Program. She studies race, gender, class, and sexuality in global economic, financial, and labor systems through interdisciplinary and intersectional methods. Broadly, her research and teaching interests include women and queer of color feminisms, racial capitalism, intersectional economic justice, poverty finance and the global economy, and Latina/Chicana/Boricua studies.

Dr. Montes Ireland is currently at work on a book manuscript which examines the cultural formation of entrepreneurialism and practices of global finance as these bear upon the lives of women of color in the U.S. and transnationally. The monograph contends with the gender, racial, and sexual politics of U.S. and global economic policy by examining discourses of poverty class racialized mothers, particularly Latinas and black women in the U.S., and racialized women of the global south, in entrepreneurial global development practices. In addition to questions of economic justice, global economy, microfinance, entrepreneurialism, and wealth disparities, she also writes on Latin@ queer studies, Latina feminisms, and queering race as part of the knowledge bases in pursuit of the decolonization of systems of gender, racialization, and economics.

In 2016-17, Heather held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Gender and Sexualities Studies at Marquette University where she was also faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies program. At Marquette, she taught courses on queer of color critique, feminist theories of intersectionality, and mothering and reproductive labor/justice. A former McNair Scholar, alumna of a working-class HSI, and a Boricua feminist, Heather has worked extensively with first generation, students of color, and LGBTQ students in various capacities and is committed to centering underrepresented students in her teaching and mentorship practices.

She earned her PhD in gender studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, with a graduate minor in Latino/a studies, and she also holds a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies and a master’s degree in women’s and ethnic studies. While at IU, she was honored with the inaugural Peer Mentoring Award by her colleagues in the IU Gender Studies Graduate Association.

Research Interests

• Economic violence, racial capitalism, labor studies, poverty policy
• U.S. women of color and transnational feminisms
• Latina/Chicana/Boricua feminism & culture
• Queer of color critique, critical sexuality studies, reproductive justice