Sunil Shanker

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Sunil Shanker is a trained theatre practitioner, actor, director, and acting coach. He has worked with international artists from Germany, Sri Lanka, the UK, Italy, India, Romania, and Australia. Sunil  graduated from the National Academy of Performing Arts (Napa), Karachi, Pakistan in 2009 with a major in acting. He has an innate understanding of how…

Richa Nagar

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Richa Nagar’s antidisciplinary and transgenre scholarship, creative writing, and cultural work in English and Hindustani has evolved across the borders of India, the U.S., and Tanzania. An anti-disciplinary border-crosser, she loves to agitate stabilized ways of knowing and telling through collective creativity and she strives to build enduring alliances with people’s struggles while engaging questions of…

Sandra Rellier

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Ph.D. candidate, Hispanic & Lusophone Literatures and Culture University of Minnesota Sandra Rellier is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic & Lusophone Literatures and culture at the University of Minnesota. She also received a Master’s degree from the University of Minnesota. Her work focuses on recovering the memories of the French and Spanish pied-noirs and…

Naimah Petigny

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Ph.D. candidate, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies University of Minnesota Naimah Petigny is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. Born and raised in western Massachusetts, Naimah was involved with youth-led racial justice organizing from an early age. Naimah received her Bachelor of…

Julie Santella

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PhD candidate, Department of Geography, Environment and SocietyUniversity of Minnesota Julie is a PhD candidate in geography at the University of Minnesota. Her work focuses on struggles over resource extraction, particularly gold and uranium mining, in the Black Hills of western South Dakota. In this, she critiques the various ways that non-Indigenous worldviews attempt to…

Tarun Kumar

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Actor, Director, Screen-writer TARUN KUMAR is an actor, director, and screen-writer who loves to create plays and films. He has been working in the performing arts in India for over three decades. Since 2007, Tarun has collaborated with Richa Nagar and the Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (Sangtin Farmers and Laborers Organization) in Uttar Pradesh to create plays…

Keavy McFadden

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Ph.D. candidate, Department of GeographyUniversity of Minnesota Drawing on urban geography, critical education studies, and feminist methodologies, Keavy’s Ph.D. research explores the centrality of education landscapes to imaginations, negotiations, and enactments of urban futures in Chicago. Her work asks: how do competing visions for Chicago’s future manifest and materialize in education infrastructure, political practices, and…

Juliana Vélez

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Ph.D. student, Conservation Sciences DepartmentUniversity of Minnesota Juliana Vélez is a PhD student in Conservation Sciences at the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife and Conservation Biology of the University of Minnesota. She received a Fulbright Scholarship (2017-2022) for doctoral studies, the Russell E. Train Fellowship from the World Wildlife Fund (2017) and the Interdisciplinary Center for…

Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS)

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Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan (SKMS) is a people’s movement in Sitapur District of Uttar Pradesh in India. It emerged from Sangtin, a group formed by rural women to enable them to shape the processes of development at all levels. The SKMS saathis or members are mainly marginal farmers or landless laborers in rural Sitapur. More…

Ghadeer Alkhenaizi

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Architect, researcher, and adjunct lecturerUniversity of Bahrain Ghadeer Alkhenaizi is an architect, a researcher, and an adjunct lecturer at the University of Bahrain in Sakhir, Bahrain. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture from the University of Bahrain in 2015. In 2016, and following several years of practice in Bahrain, she received a…

Sara Musaifer

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Sara was raised along the shores of two archipelagoes, Bahrain and the Philippines, with songs and stories of moon-swallowing whales, mountains bursting into flames, and giants reigning over ancient plains. Focusing on K-12 education in Bahrain, Sara’s research crosses multiple borders to bring into question the intertwining histories and structural conditions producing a particular knowledge…

Pramila Vasudevan

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Choreographer, Founder and Artistic Director of Aniccha Arts Pramila Vasudevan is a choreographer and a creator of community rooted/routed transdisciplinary work. Vasudevan is the founder and Artistic Director of Aniccha Arts (2004), an experimental arts collaborative producing site-specific performances that examine agency, voice, and group dynamics within community histories, institutions, and systems. Vasudevan is a…

Dia Da Costa

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Professor of Social Justice and International Studies in Education, Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Alberta Dia Da Costa’s research analyzes the complex relationship of activism in contemporary India to state violence and development discourses. She is the author of Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger called Theatre (University of Illinois Press, 2016) and Development…

Sarah Saddler

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PhD Candidate and Doctoral Fellow, Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Minnesota Sarah Saddler is a PhD Candidate and Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Minnesota. Her primary research examines the use of theatrical performance in the global workplace, with a focus on contemporary India. Her work,…

Ericka A. Lara Ovares

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MD, MPH student in Public Health Policy and Administration Ericka is a physician from Costa Rica who has dedicated her early career to the research of different illnesses in the field of Ears, Nose and Throat at the University of Minnesota Otolaryngology Department and the Ears, Nose and Throat Clinic of Hennepin County Medical Center…

Colin W. Wingate

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Student, English literature, University of Minnesota Colin W. Wingate is student of English literature at the University of Minnesota. Drawing inspiration from Black Feminist Thought, Black Studies, Caribbean Thought, Black Queer studies, and Black Performance studies, his work looks at how Black peoples improvise their being (via writing/movement), to break with the genre of “human.”…

SeungGyeong Ji

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PhD candidate, Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies University of Minnesota SeungGyeong Ji is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. Ji’s dissertation work is about the abortion politics in South Korea which has historically intermingled with the U.S. population control governance during  the Cold War.…

Ahmed K. Ali

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My name is Ahmed, named after my grandmother’s heart. I grew up in a village with a Persian name, palm trees that disturbs clouds and lots of sand. I have found roads that felt like infinity with writing, I began to walk barefoot on these roads and I never stopped walking.

Rita Ponce De León

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Visual Artist Nací en Lima, Perú, 1982. Vivo en la Ciudad de México. Trabajo principalmente a partir de experiencias de diálogo dando lugar a reflexiones conjuntas acerca de la realidad que nos atañe. Me involucro en situaciones que permitan, a través de procesos artísticos y de aprendizaje, la generación de vínculos humanos francos, aún sean éstos…

A friend is passing on today…

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by Janani Eswar The Gulmohar and I are losing a companion. May 5th, 2016 Until yesterday, if you looked outside where we work, you would find a beautiful mango tree on the plot next to us. In the respectful form of Tamil or Kannada, my mother tongue and the language that is spoken around me…

A Letter of Support from Gujarat to Kashmir

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A group of 250 activists, academics, students, artists and concerned citizens of Gujarat have signed this letter to declare solidarity with the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who have been silenced and held captive in their own land. They call for a complete lift on the media and communications blockade (including the restoration of internet…

Sophie Oldfield

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University of Cape Town and University of Basel Professor of Urban StudiesAfrican Centre for Cities, University of Cape TownUrban Studies, University of Basel Sophie Oldfield co-designed and now teaches in two new innovative urban studies post-graduate programs. Her research explores informality and the politics of urban governance, paying close attention to political practice and everyday…

Jacinta Kerketta

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Jacinta Kerketta is a poet, writer, and freelance journalist, belonging to an Oraon Adivasi community of West Singhbhum district. She writes in Hindi. In her poems, Jacinta highlights the injustices committed on the Adivasi communities, along with their struggles. Her poems are also important cultural and artistic documents of Adivasi worldviews. Jacinta is the author…

Vishal Jamkar

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Vishal Jamkar is a Ph.D. student in Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. He is engaged in praxis-based research on the issues of caste, indigeneity, natural resources, and the politics of development. Prior to joining graduate school, he worked as a community mobilizer with Dalit and Adivasi community collectives in central India around issues of…

Ola Saad Znad

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Ola is an architect, practicing architecture in both fields of design and research. Ola is currently working as cultural representative in Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities. Ola was born in Baghdad and left Iraq because of the war when she was 10 years old. She moved to Bahrain with her family, where she continued…

Sarah Almeida

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Sarah Almeida holds a master’s degree in sociology and anthropology from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a degree in anthropology from University of Brasilia. She has done research on images and bodies and leads her academic and personal interests to think about new and other counter-narratives.

Matheus Caetano

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Matheus Caetano is an undergraduate student of Anthropology at the University of Brasilia. He does research in the area of ​​ethnobiography and is interested in the relations between psychology, literature and anthropology.

Raquel Chaves

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Raquel Chaves is a Tupinambá indigenous. She is a doctoral student in  Anthropology from University of Brasilia. She holds a master’s degree in Botanic.

Josinelma Rolande

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Josinelma Rolande is a doctoral student in Anthropology from the University of Brasilia and Professor at IFMA – Maranhão Institute of Education, Science and Technology. She holds a master’s degree in Social Sciences and a degree in Artistic Education, with a degree in Fine Arts, from the Federal University of Maranhão. She has been doing research…

Why the Chinese are Making a Catastrophic Mistake in Xinjiang

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by Daanish Mustafa   Malice against children is emblematic of evil in the Abrahamic religious tradition. The Old Testament tells the story of how the Pharaoh ordered the murder of every male Hebrew child born in Egypt to protect himself against the Messiah—Moses (es)—that the shamans had foretold would destroy him. Ironically, he ended up…