Monique Haley, a respected creative educator in her field, is the former Acting Director of the Institute for Intercultural and Anthropological Studies, an Associate Professor of Dance (College of Fine Arts) and African American and African Studies (Institute for Intercultural and Anthropological Studies) and a Faculty Fellow in Community and Engagement for the College of Arts and Sciences at Western Michigan University. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Jazz Dance and Performing Arts from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA. Her scholarly research, featured in the informative jazz book Rooted Jazz: Africanist Aesthetics and Equity in the 21st Century, focuses on African cultural values and cultivating a unique ethos and sense of ritual in contemporary jazz dance pedagogy. She has worked with several national dance companies as a choreographer and has performed in numerous regional musical theater productions in the Chicagoland area. Ms. Haley’s influence extends to the American Dance Festival (ADF) Summer Dance Intensive (contemporary jazz dance technique/repertory), where she uses the Diasporic Encounter Method (DEM)— a working methodology devised by Haley focuses on African cultural values, cultivating visceral veracity and collective ethos in contemporary jazz dance pedagogy.

In August 2024, Monique presented her research at The International African Diasporic Dance and Traditions Conference in Bahia, Brazil. In this new year, Monique’s solo work, The Bearer, is one of 33 works selected out of 230 submissions to take part in Radfest 2025 Midwest Regional Alternative Dance Festival (Kalamazoo, MI). She will recruit for ADF at the International Conference and Festival of Blacks in Dance (IABD) in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and implement her rooted jazz Africanist perspective, DEM, as the foundational framework for the Joffrey Midwest Summer Intensive (Detroit) program in June 2025. Asé