Fellows

Asif Majid is a scholar-artist-educator working at the intersection of racialized sociopolitical identities, multimedia, marginality, and new performance, particularly through devising community-based participatory theatre, making improvisational music, and addressing the nexus of Islam and performance. He has published in a range of academic and popular media outlets, and his performance credits include work with the Kennedy Center in the US and the Royal Exchange Theatre in the UK, among others. Asif was a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow with the San Francisco Arts Commission and a Lab Fellow with The Laboratory for Global Performance and Performance. He earned his PhD in Anthropology, …

Raquel’s research explores socially-engaged creative practices and the distinct place-based logics that guide community arts organizations. This interest is reflected in her dissertation, “Taking Up Space: Youth Culture and Creative Resistance in a Gentrifying City,” an ethnographic study that examines how youth engage with public artmaking strategies to resist gentrification, while investigating how community arts education structures this process. Raquel teaches courses on art and culture at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and designs participatory community arts programs at the intersection of art, education, and cultural organizing. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation and the National

Dr. Cameron Herman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and an affiliate faculty member in Africana Studies at Buffalo State College. His teaching and research broadly focuses on understanding the ways marginalized groups experience and navigate social inequalities in urban environments. Cameron has published solo and collaborative journal articles, chapters in edited volumes and online publications on a range of topics including Black artists’ response to gentrification, housing activism and neoliberal governance, Black masculinity in hip hop. In the wake of COVID-19’s onset, Cameron’s research agenda has expanded through collaborations with community partners and equity-minded scholars in

Gregory-Kameka’s most recent research focuses on sociology of the role of arts organizations and their cultural policy landscape in sustaining or disrupting racial capitalism (Robinson, 1983). Her doctoral work (2015-20) was the first piece of research to fully document the closure, aftermath and legacy creation of a Black-led arts organization; the first empirical analysis of what happens at this point of stress. Such closures often happen quickly and are complex. They are sometimes documented after the fact using document analysis and archival material. However, this empirical, data-rich analysis of what happens in real time when an organization implodes is important

Nazanin Ghaffari holds a Ph.D. in urban planning and public policy from the University of Texas at Arlington. She is interested in navigating disciplinary terrain in urban planning, public administration, feminist geography, and social anthropology to highlight the racialized, classed, gendered, and sexualized blind spots and biases found within conceptualizations of public spaces. Her research concerns inclusionary and/or exclusionary strategies incorporated by signature public spaces governance regimes through design, programming, policing, and management processes. She also investigates how design and planning empower historically marginalized communities through artistic interventions and bottom-up innovations to advance social, racial, and climate justice. Trained as

Timnet Gedar is a historian with commitments to community engaged research and social justice. She holds an MSc in Social Development Practice, and graduate certificates in African Studies and Museum Studies. Her work includes research, teaching, and practice in intellectual history, political and social movements, Black print cultures, museums, education, and community engagement. She is a daughter of Eritrea and a proud Chicagoan. Chicago SinfoniettaGedar works with Chicago Sinfonietta, an orchestra that has sought for 36 years to promote racial and cultural equity in classical music. Gedar studies why the sinfonietta was founded, how it found its feet, how it

Ying Diao is an ethnomusicologist and cultural anthropologist with research expertise in relationships between cultural production, ethnicity, and politics, and in the anthropology of religion, voice, and mediation. Her work has focused on the musical dynamics of cross-border ethnoreligious development and resilience among upland communities in southwest China and mainland Southeast Asia. Supported by the SEM Deborah Wong Research & Publication Award and AAS Publication Support Grant, her book project, Muted, Mediated, and Mobilized: Faith by Aurality on the China-Myanmar Border, examines how transnational sound production, circulation, and consumption become integral to the Lisu perception and striving after Christian faith

Monica Patrice Barra (she/her/hers) is a cultural anthropologist, ceramicist, and assistant professor at the University of South Carolina. Broadly, her research examines the relationship between race, inequality, and geography in the United States. She has explored these topics over the past decade in collaboration with visual and performing artists, policymakers, scientists, community based organizations, and fishermen. Her experience and research has been supported by a variety of institutions across the arts, sciences, and humanities, including: The Princeton University Art Museum, the National Academies of Sciences, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Her writings on place-based arts,

Jaleesa Renee Wells, PhD, is an artist, entrepreneur, and interdisciplinary scholar investigating the intersections between culture, society, and enterprise. She is an assistant professor of arts administration at the University of Kentucky. As an Arts Research with Communities of Color Fellow, she will conduct a year-long ethnographic research project with the Oakland-based Artist as First Responder, Black Cultural Zone, and EastSide Arts Alliance. She’s published on Black representation in cultural policy (in Arts Management & Cultural Policy Across the African Diaspora), hybrid entrepreneurial contexts and concepts (in the Research Handbook on The Sociology of Organizations), and Black women’s experiences in higher educational institutions (Gender Work

Silvia Rodriguez Vega is a community-engaged writer, artist, and educator. She is an assistant professor at UCSB’s Department of Chicana/o Studies. As an Arts Research with Communities of Color Fellow, she will conduct a year-long ethnographic research project with the San Francisco-based Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project. Her research explores how anti-immigration policy impacts immigrant children’s lives through methodological tools centering on participatory art and creative expression. Her first book, titled Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children, was published by NYU Press in 2023. Based on ten years of work with immigrant children in Arizona and California, Drawing Deportation gives readers a