Julia “Jules” Balén is Professor of English and Faculty Director for the Center for Community Engagement at California State University Channel Islands (the newest of the CSU campuses) where ze has served on the President’s Commission for Human Relations, Equity, and Diversity, and has served, or currently serves, on the committees to develop majors in Chicana/o Transborder Studies, Africana Studies, Philosophy, and a brand new major—Freedom and Justice Studies. Ze has also taken the lead in developing proactive workshops for faculty, staff, and students to make the campus a more welcoming place for all.

Trained in facilitation and mediation techniques in the late 70s through work in Movement for a New Society, Balén has continued through the years to offer consultations, training sessions, and retreats for groups who want to improve their work together. Over the years, ze has worked with more than fifty organizations—some over the course of many years–ranging from community and business groups to academic associations. Ze speaks and consults locally and nationally on the subject of balancing power in groups.

In the eight-and-a-half years Balén spent as Associate Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona, ze regularly offered student, faculty, and staff support in facilitating meetings, and taught effective meeting practices in the senior and graduate-level course, “Activisms and Organizations.” Balén presented regularly on issues of diversity and brought the national -ISM Project to the University of Arizona. This was a faculty/curriculum development project funded by the Ford Foundation to produce a year-long, team-taught course that addressed oppressive practices and issues of diversity. Balén also served on the executive committee for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Studies (of which ze was a founding member), the Tucson Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Commission Education Subcommittee, and on the national -ISM (N.) Project advisory board.

Balén has a Ph.D. in Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies with a focus on issues of embodiment and power relations and has published on anti-racist/classist feminist, and queer theory and practice. Publications include: A Queerly Joyful Noise: Choral Musicking for Social Justice, “Erotics, Agency, and Social Movement: Communities of Sexuality and Musicality in LGBT Choruses” in Social Justice for All:  Creating a More Inclusive Space for the Queer Community, and “Practicing What We Teach” in Women’s Studies for the Future: Foundations, Interrogations, Politics.