Visiting Artist/Writer/Curator/Lecturer

Geoffrey G. O’Brien

Poet and Professor of Poetry at UC Berkeley
Geoffrey G. O’Brien gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2021, part of the Spring 2021 Flash Reading Series.

Poet Geoffrey G. O’Brien was educated at Harvard University and the University of Iowa. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Experience in Groups (2018), People on Sunday (2013), Metropole (2011), Green and Gray (2007), and The Guns and Flags Project (2002). His work is part of Three Poets...

Ayodele Nzinga

Actress, Director, Playwright, Poet, Dramaturg, Performance Consultant, Educator, Community Advocate, and the Director of the Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc
Ayodele Nzinga gave a Visiting Writer Reading at the Arts Research Center in April 2023, part of the Spring 2023 Flash Reading Series.

Ayodele Nzinga is a multi-hyphenated artist; a brilliant actress, producing director, playwright, poet, dramaturg, performance consultant, educator, and community advocate. She is the director of the Lower Bottom Playaz, Inc., Oakland's oldest North American African Theater Company and founder of Lower Bottom Playaz Summer Theater Day Camp. She is co-founder of Janga’s House a Black Women Arts collective and a founding member of...

Kim Nguyen

Curator and Head of Programs at the CCA Wattis Institute
Kim Nguyen was a Visiting Curator Panel Participant at the Feminist Curatorial Practices Roundtable at the Arts Research Center on April 11, 2018.

Kim Nguyen is a curator and writer based in San Francisco, where she is Curator and Head of Programs at the CCA Wattis Institute. Nguyen was formerly director and curator of Artspeak, an artist-run non-profit in Vancouver, Canada. Between 2011 and 2016 she presented exhibitions and publications with Alex Da Corte, Valérie Blass, Yuji Agematsu, Abigail DeVille, Aaron Flint Jamison, and Danh Vo, among many others. Her writing has...

Adam Nilsen

Senior Lecturer in the Lurie College of Education at San Jose State
Adam Nilsen gave a Visiting Scholar Lecture at the Arts Research Center on February 24, 2016.

Adam Nilsen was the head of education and interpretation at the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford’s Graduate School of Education in 2015 in Learning Sciences and Technology Design. He holds a B.A. from Stanford and an M.A. from New York University in Anthropology. His professional background is in museum education. As a researcher at the Oakland Museum of California, he curated exhibits with themes including migrant...

Maggie Nelson

Writer and Professor of English at the University of Southern California
Maggie Nelson gave a Visiting Writer Lecture/Conversation at the Arts Research Center on January 30, 2017.

Poet, scholar, and nonfiction writer Maggie Nelson earned a PhD in English literature at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her work is often described as genre crossing or hybrid; she has noted her interest in poet Eileen Myles’s idea of “vernacular scholarship,” adding, “I need to talk back, or talk with, theorists and philosophers in ordinary language, to dramatize how much their ideas matter...

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...

Jon Refsdal Moe

Professor of Dramaturgy at Stockholm University of the Arts
Jon Refsdal Moe was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Nordic Time Zones Conference at the Arts Research Center on March 26, 2014.

Jon Refsdal Moe is a writer and dramaturg from Oslo. He has written two novels, one doctoral dissertation, several essays and a lot of criticism. He was artistic director of Black Box teater in Oslo from 2009 to 2016 and is now professor of dramaturgy at Stockholm University of the Arts.

Mihnea Mircan

Curator and Writer
Mihnea Mircan was a Visiting Curator Panel Participant/Speaker at the Location/Translation Symposium at the Arts Research Center on September 19, 2012.

Mihnea Mircan is a curator based in Leuven, Belgium. As artistic director of Extra City Kunsthal Antwerp between 2011-15, he curated, among others, ‘A Slowdown at the Museum’, ‘The Corner Show’ (with Wouter Davidts and Philip Metten), ‘1:1. Hans van Houwelingen and Jonas Staal’, the series ‘Cross-examinations’, and ‘Jean-Luc Moulène, Endwards’. His recent work includes the long-term research project ‘Allegory of the...

Trịnh Thị Minh Hà

Filmmaker, Writer, Literary Theorist, Composer, and Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School in Gender & Women's Studies and Rhetoric at UC Berkeley
Trịnh Thị Minh Hà was a Affiliated Faculty Panel Participant at the Curating People Symposium at the Arts Research Center on April 28, 2011.

Originally trained as a musical composer, who received her two masters and Ph.D. from University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Trịnh Thị Minh Hà is a world-renowned independent filmmaker and feminist, post-colonial theorist. She teaches courses that focus on women’s work as related to cultural politics, post-coloniality, contemporary critical theory and the arts. She has also taught at Harvard, Smith, Cornell, San Francisco State...

Jill Miller

Assistant Professor of Art Practice at UC Berkeley, Founding Director of Platform Artspace
Jill Miller was a Visiting Scholar Panel Participant at the Internet Tour at the Arts Research Center on October 12, 2023.

Jill Miller is a visual artist who works across a wide range of media, from video installations to public practices, and many hybrids in between. She often collaborates with individuals and local communities in the form of public interventions, workshops, and participatory community projects. Her work is playful, and she uses humor as a strategy for opening up meaningful conversations about difficult subjects. In past work, she: lived in the...