AM Medina is a first-year graduate student in the PhD program in Music (Integrative Studies) at the University of California, San Diego. AM's research is at the intersection of performance studies, media studies, popular music studies. They are in the early phases of crafting a research project that examines the ways that Brown and Black trans and queer artists have used references to and sounds from the documentary film Paris is Burning.

Originally from Portland, OR, AM earned their Bachelor of Music (2021) at the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music in Appleton, Wisconsin. AM's recent research project titled "Listening to the Internet: Cultural Discourses, Vicente Fernández, and Hearing YouTube Comments" was a multidisciplinary investigation into the post-national yet intimate interactions and discourses between YouTube commenters on a music video by Mexican icon of masculinity, Vicente Fernández. Their undergraduate thesis earned magna cum laude in Independent Study in addition to Lawrence's Clyde Duncan Prize in Music.