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…

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…

The granddaughter of humble farmers with great love for their homelands, Indigenous educational researcher Elizabeth Sumida Huaman works to fulfill her ancestors’ visions for a beautiful world. She is Wanka/Quechua from the Mantaro Valley, Peru, and associate professor of Comparative and International Development Education at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Her work focuses on…

Esmae is a graduate from the University of Minnesota who earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies while minoring in Communications. The interconnectedness of politics of power, knowledge-making, and the pedagogical potential of stories serves the basis for her research. Drawing on her experience in Richa Nagar’s graduate course Stories, Bodies, Movements, she explores…

selma banich (1979, Yugoslavia) is an artist and activist. Her socially engaged art practice is grounded in explorative, processual, and activist work, and is politically inspired by anarchism and feminism. selma has worked independently and in collaboration with other artists, curators, groups, and initiatives in the Balkans, Europe, and the US. She has participated in…

Dr. Yalda Hamidi is Assistant Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Minnesota State University. She is interested in transnational and Islamic feminisms, feminist pedagogy, and feminist cultural and literary studies. Her article, “Politics of Location in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis” is under publication in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. In 2020, she published “Locating Sickness:…

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…

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…

Sima’s work has been shaped by experiences of living through a revolution, a war, and displacement. Multiple itineraries, from Tehran to San Francisco, Oakland, Toronto, Houston, suburbs of Boston, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis have inspired Sima’s activism, poetry, and scholarship on immigration, queerness, refugeedom, and geopolitics. Sima’s commitment to social justice is informed by the relationship…

Raised by a single mother who is a generous human being, indefatigable worker, and art lover nurtured by oral performances, Surafel was educated and supported by his ‘yaltemarech’ (‘uneducated’) parent. It was after he had committed himself to socially conscious artistic, journalistic, and intellectual services at notable independent and public theatres and media houses that he…

Marijana Hameršak is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb and a titular Assistant Professor at the University of Zagreb. Her areas of research are migration, children’s literature and book history. She is the author of the book Pričalice: o povijesti djetinjstva i bajke (Taletellers: the History of Childhood and…

A Adams (they/them) is a PhD student in Communication Studies at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. They specialize in disability, rhetoric, and narrative. Outside of the university, A spends their time writing, playing competitive trading card games, and playing basketball.

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…

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…

Abraham is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on sport, recreation and leisure in colonial Zimbabwe and Africa. Through his research, Abraham conceptualizes African modifications of boxing not just as a protest or resistance, but as a fundamental rejection of the aspirational ideals of western pastimes and games.…

Marappachi is registered as a not-for-profit cultural organization. Founded by Late Poet Inquilab as the Founding President in 2006, it attempts to practice art and theatre that is relevant and contemporary. A. Mangai has been with the group right from its inception. The group addresses deeply ingrained prejudices in our society like caste, class and…

Sean Cameron Golden is a doctoral student in Literacy Education at the University of Minnesota. There he explores how storytelling (in all its forms) can help to restore narratives to breathe life into the Black Queer Diaspora–for all the queer kids out there still searching. As a part of his work in the Department of…

Dr. Ruth Nicole Brown is the Inaugural Chairperson of the Department of African American and African Studies at Michigan State University. Her research and creative praxis explores how Black girls conceptualize freedom, creativity, and relationships in Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT). Brown founded SOLHOT in 2006 as a collective space to celebrate Black girlhood and…

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…

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…

PhD Candidate, Department of Communication Studies, University of Minnesota Samira Musleh is a PhD Candidate in Communication Studies with a minor in Feminist and Critical Sexuality Studies. Her research interest lies in the intersection(s) of gender, religion, and decoloniality. Samira’s current work focuses on unpaid labor, social and biological reproduction, non-capitalist economies, marriage and family…

A. Mangai is the pseudonym of Dr. V. Padma. She retired as Associate Professor in English from Stella Maris College, Chennai. She has been actively engaged in Tamil theatre as an actor, Director and Playwright for almost three decades. She hopes that her academic, activist and artistic selves can find a vibrant intersection. Her fields of interest…

Richa Singh is a saathi of Sangtin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, a movement of farmers and laborers in Sitapur District of Uttar Pradesh, India. Immersed in organizational and movement building work for over two and half decades, she has co-authored a number of books, articles, and essays, including Sangtin Yatra: Saat Zindgiyon Mein Lipta Nari Vimarsh,…

Drishadwati Bargi is a doctoral candidate in the department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota. She is soon to finish a dissertation on Dalit literature and anti caste cinema. Her interests include South Asian political writings and cinema, feminist theory and post structuralist theories of power and spectacle. She can be reached…

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…

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.

Emina writes, facilitates, explores, organizes, agitates and walks barefoot at the intersections of migration, education, and globalization.  She engages with anti-militaristic, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist political praxes. Her work is inspired by migrants’ everyday struggle for freedom and epistemes emerging from transnational and decolonial feminism, critical border activism, and collective knowledge production.  She is a member…

A. Revathi is transfeminist activist, writer and a crusader for LGBTIQA+ community in India. Her books The Truth About Me, A life in trans activism and Our Bodies Our Selves (Unarvum Uruvamum) are pioneering works on trans lives.  Her career as a writer won her a place on the Columbia University Butler Library banner.  She finds theatre a powerful art form.

Kurdish-Iranian born, sculptor, architect and interdisciplinary artist, working in installation, site specific, performance art, social practice, and sculpture. Pedram is based in between Minneapolis, Minnesota and Denton/Dallas, Texas. He has been featured in numerous national and international solo and group art exhibitions since 2010 such as the Victoria and Albert museum, London 2012, Documenta 13th…

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…