Sheryl L. Lutjens earned a Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She teaches comparative politics, Latin American politics, public administration, and feminist theory and politics at Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff, Arizona), where she served as Director of Women's Studies from 2002-2006. Her published research includes The State, Bureaucracy, and the Cuban Schools: Power and Participation (1996), the co-edited Rereading Women in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Political Economy of Gender (2002), as well as articles and chapters variously focusing on women, children, education, the state and politics in Cuba, women and politics in the United States, and U.S.-Cuba academic relations. She has been active in the professional communities in the areas of comparative and international education, Latin American studies, Cuban studies, and women's studies.