Dr. Meaghan Brady Nelson is an artist and educator living in Nashville, Tennessee with her two young artists. Meaghan is an Associate Professor of Art Education at Belmont University. She was an Assistant Professor of Art Education at Middle Tennessee State University from 2013 - 2018, and was a Visiting Professor of Art Education at The University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 2012-2013. Meaghan has a BFA in painting from Washington State University (2001), a teaching certificate from Western Washington University (2003) and both her Masters (2008) and Doctorate (2012) in Art Education were completed at The Ohio State University. 

Her research centers around the ways collaborative artmaking experiences and critical visual literacy may inspire social consciousness. She combines this methodology along with her multilayered identity of becoming a “Mothering-ArtAdemic” (Nelson, M.B., & Combe, J., 2017). Meaghan collaboratively created the Kids Arts Festival of Tennessee that annually serves over 5,000 community members, and directed the Unity Flag Project that works to create Purple Empathy in American democracy through the visual arts. https://unityflagproject.com/

Meaghan is dedicated to arts-based service and advocacy in her local and greater communities. Her work has been published both nationally and internationally and as a painter she keeps an active studio practice. Meaghan has been fortunate to have taught in a variety of settings with a multitude of subject and curriculums since 2000. These environments include the university level, public schools, museums and community settings. Her ultimate goal as an artist educator is to inspire students to use their knowledge, skills and talents in order to build community capacity by empowering themselves and others.