Annie Zean Dunbar is a PhD student in the Graduate School of Social Work here at the University of Denver. Zean is a Liberian-American writer, educator, and social worker with roots in Lowell, MA.  She is an alum of the University of Chicago's Social Service Administration where she received her Master's and was one of 11 students in the Global Social Work (formally International Social Welfare) Program of Study. Zean has a variety of experiences in multi-cultural communities as a researcher, program manager, survey researcher, and case manager.

Previously, Zean worked as an after-school enrichment teacher and manager for programs offering structured arts classes and activities that enrich children’s lives through exposure to the world’s many cultures. She has also engaged in a number of service sector positions including sales, customer service, and food preparation.

Zean is interested in community organizing and community engagement. She is a co-founder and organizer for the Chicago-based arts collective Connect-the-Dots, which aims to dissect and explore big ideas and social constructs.

Her research interests include race and identity formation, mutual aid and collective care strategies organizational theory, and long-term refugee and (im)migrant resettlement in the United States.  Zean’s writing and creative works center community conceptions of truth and omission, the liminal space between understanding self and others, an examination of memory, and the exploration of the interstitial space. Her current artistic endeavors include Interstitial: an (Im)migration podcast exploring what it means to be in between with fellow 1.5 generation immigrant and refugee adults, and What does it mean to let go?, a conceptual reinterpretation of memoir, history, and narrative voice. Zean's epistemological orientation is grounded in a grassroots community decolonial intersectional feminist framework. Zean is also the co-owner of Interstitial Media Arts (IMA) a Creative Consulting firm focused on digital media and research. 

She is the Social Media Lead of the Emerging Scholars and Practitioner on Migration Issues (ESPMI) Network, a global network of junior scholars, practitioners, artists, activists reconceptualizing the field of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies. Zean describes herself as a post-goth black woman, perpetual optimist, with an affinity for commas, sing-alongs, and referential humor. She is an avid reader and writer, active Dungeons and Dragons player, and can get through a few Elliott Smith songs on the ukulele.