As a historian and fifth-generation Tucsonense, Alisha brings a distinctive lens to the socio-political landscape of the borderlands, pushing back against dominant narratives and centering voices that have been left out. She has taught across generations inside and outside the classroom, was shaped by punk rock, and co-directs the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum in Tucson. As a self-identified “crip Chicana mama”, her personal experiences inform the authentic, community-centered way she engages people and encourages them to be agents in their own lives.

Vasquez uses folklife lenses and her training as a Historian to help bring tangible and social change alongside other disabled people. She hopes to bring folklife and new cultural practices to Disability Studies/Justice, always striving towards our collective liberation.

Vasquez also serves as Director of the Tucson Disabled Ecologies Satellite, a position that came from co-curating Survival and Resistance, a 2025 series of free communing programming honoring the fortieth anniversary of Tucsonans for a Clean Environment — a movement that organized against defense industry water contamination in Tucson’s southside, and the real-world inspiration for co-curator, Dr. Sunaura Taylor’s book Disabled Ecologies.” That same year, SFA began further investment into Disability as a cultural community and founded the Disabled Ecologies Folklife Initiative (DEFI). In 2026, SFA and the DEFI formalized a partnership with Dr. Taylor’s Disabled Ecologies Lab at UC Berkeley to establish connections among disabled people in the Southwest with Bay area and national Disability Studies and Justice thinkers.