Activism

Isabel Allende, in Conversation

November 5, 2025
Read more about Isabel Allende's work on her website, here.

Michael Pollan

Journalist and Professor of Non-Fiction at Harvard University
Michael Pollan gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on April 24, 2009. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. Pollan is the author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers; three of them (including his latest, How to Change Your Mind) were immediate #1 New York Times bestsellers....

Devi Peacock

Founder and Executive Director of Peacock Rebellion
Devi Peacock gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on October 6, 2020. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Devi Peacock is a South Asian non-binary storyteller, performing artist and community organizer based in Oakland, California. At the time of this interview, they were the founding Artistic and Executive Director of Peacock Rebellion, an Oakland-based BIPOC, queer- and trans-led arts organization, as well as the co-organizer of the Liberated 23rd Ave. cultural land trust in Oakland. They additionally...

Cecilia Palmeiro

Writer, Activist, and Adjunct Professor of Contemporary Latin American Studies and Gender Theory at NYU in Buenos Aires
Cecilia Palmeiro was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Amateurism Across the Arts Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 9, 2018. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Cecilia Palmeiro is one of the founders of the transformative Latin American feminist movement Ni Una Menos, or “Not One Woman Less,” which organizes to end femicide and gender-based violence. The Ni Una Menos collective has been supported by Global Fund for Women since 2017. She is also a writer, literary critic, performer, feminist activist,...

Julian Oliver

Critical Engineer, Educator, Artist, and Activist
Julian Oliver gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on November 2, 2015. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Julian Oliver is a Critical Engineer, educator, artist, and activist. His work has been exhibited at numerous museums, festivals and galleries worldwide, among them Transmediale, Ars Electronica, the Vienna Biennale, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, and the Japan Media Arts Festival. Lectures related to his work and ideas have been presented at many conferences and universites internationally,...

Zouhair Mussa

Community organizer and Multi-Disciplinary Artist
Zouhair Mussa gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2022, part of the Spring 2022 Flash Reading Series. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Zouhair Mussa is a Sudanese/Nubian-American community organizer and multi-disciplinary artist from West Oakland. His art is based on the life he has lived and aims at addressing that which is detrimental to him and his community. He seeks to shed light on injustices that plague the places he calls home. He uses his art to remember the fallen and dreams...

Aja Monet

ARC Fellow, Poet, Writer, Lyricist, and Activist
Aja Monet was a Poetry & the Senses Fellow in Spring 2021. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Born in New York City to parents of Cuban and Jamaican descent and raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, Aja Monet Bacquie began writing poems when she was eight or nine years old. While attending Baruch College Campus High School, she performed spoken-word for school talent shows. Around this time, Monet joined Urban Word NYC—a non-profit organization that offers guidance and public platforms to young writers,...

Erin McElroy

Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington
Erin McElroy gave a Visiting Scholar Lecture at the Arts Research Center on November 3, 2020. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Erin McElroy is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Washington. McElroy’s work focuses upon intersections of gentrification, technology, digitality, empire, and racial capitalism in the US and in Romania, alongside housing justice organizing, countermapping, and transnational solidarities. This informs the focus of their manuscript, ...

Angela Marino

ARC Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at the UC Berkeley
Angela Marino was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2013 & 2017 – she was chosen in the Faculty category. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Angela Marino's teaching and research focuses on performance and political cultures of the Southwest, Caribbean, and Latin America. She teaches classes on theater and performance studies theory, methods, and a praxis class called Teatro Lab. She also leads an interdisciplinary research initiative, Critical Perspectives on Democracy and Media (D+M Lab), which supports community-engaged...

Cannupa Hanska Luger

Multidisciplinary Artist
Cannupa Hanska Luger gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on April 16, 2020. If you are interested in contacting this artist, please find them on their website.

Cannupa Hanska Luger (b.1979) is a New Mexico based multidisciplinary artist creating monumental installations, sculpture and performance to communicate urgent stories of 21st Century Indigeneity. Incorporating ceramics, steel, fiber, video and repurposed materials, Luger activates speculative fiction, engages in land-based actions of repair and practices empathetic response through social...