Activism

C. Greig Crysler

2014 ARC Fellow
C. Greig Crysler was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2014 – he was chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.

C. Greig Crysler completed his professional training in architecture at the University of Waterloo, Canada and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, UK. He teaches courses in the History, Theory and Society of Architecture. Through his leadership as Arcus Chair (2012-2022) and his role as Program Director of the CED’s Arcus Endowment, Crysler has translated his commitment to equity and social justice in design education into frameworks for student and...

Mel Y. Chen

ARC Fellow and Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at UC Berkeley
Mel Y. Chen was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2013 – they were chosen in the Faculty Fellow category.

Mel Y. Chen (they/them+) is Professor of Gender & Women's Studies and Director for the Center for the Study of Sexual Culture at the University of California, Berkeley as well as Director of the Disability Studies Minor. Mel is also an affiliate of the Center for Race and Gender, the Institute for Cognitive and Behavioral Science, the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society, and the Haas Disability Studies and LGBTQ Citizenship Research Clusters. Previously,...

Jeff Chang

Writer and Cultural Organizer
Jeff Chang gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on October 17, 2016.

Jeff Chang is a writer and cultural organizer who has worked in and written extensively on culture, politics, the arts, and music.

He is finishing a cultural biography of Bruce Lee called Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner/HarperCollins). He is the host of the Edge of Reason, a podcast of...

Tania Bruguera

Artist, Activist
Tania Bruguera was a Visiting Artist Panel Participant at the Spiraling Time Symposium at the Arts Research Center on March 15, 2013.

Tania Bruguera was born in 1968 in Havana, Cuba. Bruguera, a politically motivated performance artist, explores the relationship between art, activism, and social change in works that examine the social effects of political and economic power. By creating proposals and aesthetic models for others to use and adapt, she defines herself as an initiator rather than an author, and often collaborates with multiple institutions as well as...

Kevin Bott

Community-Based Theater Artist, Scholar
Kevin Bott was a Visiting Lecturer Panel Participant at the Cross Sector Conference on April 28, 2016.

Kevin Bott is a community-based theater artist and scholar whose interests lie at the intersection of healing, freedom, justice, and movement-building, as well as in the mutually supportive relationship between individual excellence and collective creation. Bott is the founder and artistic director of Ritual4Return, which he began developing in 2008. His 2010 doctoral dissertation is entitled “A Ritual for Return: Investigating the Process of Creating an Original Rite of...

Lisa Blackmore

Researcher, Curator, and Educator
Lisa Blackmore gave a Visiting Lecturer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on November 14, 2024.

Lisa Blackmore is a researcher, curator and educator, working with art and water cultures in Latin America. Since 2018, she has been directing entre—ríos, a platform whose collaborative methodologies (re)connect diverse communities to bodies of water through curatorial, editorial and pedagogical projects. She is a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley and Senior Lecturer in Art History and Interdisciplinary Studies...

Evan Bissell

ARC Fellow, Artist, Researcher, Facilitator, and Administrator
Evan Bissell was an ARC Fellow in 2015 – he was chosen in the graduate and faculty category.

Evan Bissell (he/him, white) facilitates participatory art and research projects that support equitable systems and liberatory processes. With groups around the country, he has supported the development of curriculum, public art, laws, books, and convenings that build imagination, power and capacity around the just transition, anti-prison and police efforts, housing justice, and health equity, among others. Most recently Evan created the Arts & Cultural Strategy program at the...

John Perry Barlow

Poet, Essayist, Cattle Rancher, Cyberlibertarian Political Activist, and Former Lyricist for the Grateful Dead
John Perry Barlow gave a Visiting Writer Lecture at the Arts Research Center on September 8, 2014. In 1990, John Perry Barlow co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit based in the U.S. that provides legal aid to defend individuals and new technologies from what it considers to be misdirected legal threats. His writing about the impact of the Internet has influenced people’s thinking since the network’s earliest days. His essays for Wired, The New York Times, Communications of the ACM and other publications have been vital to the public...

Anyka Barber

Artist, Activist, Curator, Entrepreneur
Anyka Barber was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Cross Sector Conference at the Arts Research Center on April 28, 2016.

Born and raised in Oakland, California Anyka Barber is a mother, an artist/activist, curator and entrepreneur. In 2010 Anyka founded Betti Ono, a creative social enterprise and center for arts, culture, and community committed to the cultural, social, political and economic emancipation and development of low-income, immigrant, and LGBTQ communities of color. In her role as director and curator of Betti Ono, she has curated and produced more...

Iván Arenas

ARC Fellow and Senior Associate Director at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy
Dr. Arenas was an ARC Fellow in Spring 2010 – he was chosen in the Graduate Fellow category.

Iván Arenas is an Associate Director at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy where he works to support engaged research that aims to increase society’s understanding of the root causes of racial and ethnic inequality and create research-based policy solutions and collective action. Trained as an anthropologist and architect, his research focuses on how social movements use creative art practices to establish solidarities beyond the state. Dr. Arenas is a practicing...