Activism

Leigh Raiford

Professor of African American Studies at UC Berkeley
Leigh Raiford was a Visiting Lecturer Panel Participant at the Art as Critique Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 1, 2019.

Leigh Raiford is a Professor of African American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where she teaches, researches, writes and curates about race, gender, justice and visuality. She is the inaugural director of the Black Studies Collaboratory, a three year project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She also serves as affiliate faculty in the Program in American Studies, and the Department of Gender and...

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.

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, and queer feminist theorist.

Palmeiro received her MA and PhD from...

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.

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 were an organizer at the Queer Cultural Center, home of the National Queer Arts...

Julian Oliver

Critical Engineer, Educator, Artist, and Activist
Julian Oliver gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on November 2, 2015.

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, including The Chaos Communication Congress, Tate Modern, Princeton University, and the ZKM...

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.

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 of healing the struggle. Most importantly, he wants to uplift and inspire change...

Aja Monet

ARC Fellow, Poet, Writer, Lyricist, and Activist
Aja Monet was a Poetry & the Senses Fellow in Spring 2021.

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, particularly those of color—and became a part of a community of aspiring urban...

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.

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, Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies...

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.

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 partnerships with student research apprentices in policy analysis and art production. See...

Cannupa Hanska Luger

Multidisciplinary Artist
Cannupa Hanska Luger gave a Visiting Artist Lecture at the Arts Research Center on April 16, 2020.

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 collaboration. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is an...

Grace Lavery

ARC Fellow, Associate Professor of English Critical Theory and Gender and Women's Studies at UC Berkeley
Grace Lavery was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2016 – she was chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.

Grace Lavery is a writer, editor, and academic living in Brooklyn, NY. As an Associate Professor of English, Critical Theory, and Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, her research explores the history and theory of aesthetics and interpretation, with particular interests in psychoanalysis, literary realism, and queer and trans cultures. Her...