Denise Bates

Denise E. Bates is an Associate Dean, Interim Faculty Head, and Professor in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. She is also a Thought Leader Fellow with the American Indian Policy Institute with the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions and a Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory.

Her scholarship examines leadership, activism, community development, and education among Indigenous peoples of the 19th and 20th-century U.S. South. Professor Bates authored multiple publications, including Basket Diplomacy: Leadership, Alliance-Building, and Resilience among the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, 1884-1984 (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), We Will Always Be Here: Native Peoples on Living and Thriving in the South (University Press of Florida, 2016), and The Other Movement: Indian Rights and Civil Rights in the Deep South (University of Alabama Press, 2012). Her most recent book, co-authored with Dr. Linda Langley, entitled Louisiana Coushatta Basket Makers: Traditional Knowledge, Resourcefulness, and Artistry as a Means of Survival (Louisiana State University Press) was released in 2021. She is presently working on a new book entitled “Interpreting the Indigenous South: Tribal Nations Confronting Race and Erasure in the U.S. Southeast,” which is under contract with Routledge Press. As an advocate of community-engaged history, Professor Bates collaborates on projects that build tribal oral history collections, as well as archival and historical repositories. She is a professional project manager (PMP and DASM certified) and uses her training to manage or serve as a consultant for a variety of public-facing history and humanities-based projects.

Bates has designed and taught courses in History, Interdisciplinary Studies, Liberal Studies, Organizational Leadership, and Project Management. She also has been involved in designing and implementing new instructional technologies at ASU and served as the faculty lead on a Gates Foundation-funded grant that resulted in the development and implementation of adaptive courseware for two U.S. history courses. She also developed the ASU Indigenous Leadership Academy curriculum in partnership with the American Indian Policy Institute and serves as the Faculty Lead for the Master of Project Management degree program.