Fellows

DeRon S. Williams

DeRon S. Williams is an Assistant Professor of Theatre in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Loyola University Chicago and a freelance director and dramaturg. He has published in The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Continuum: The Journal of African Diaspora Drama. His directing credits include Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size, Regina Taylor’s Crowns, Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park, and Africa to America: A Celebration of Who We Are, an interdisciplinary performance written by Wendy R. Coleman. DeRon is also co-editor of the forthcoming edited volume titled Contemporary Black Theatre & Performance: Acts of Rebellion, Activism, and …

Jason C. White

Dr. Jason C. White is an Assistant Professor of Arts Administration in the Department of Art at Xavier University, where he prepares students for diverse careers in arts administration. An accomplished researcher, educator, author and theorist, White has published in Artivate: A Journal of Entrepreneurship in the Arts, Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, Innovative Higher Education, and Arts Education Policy Review. White is also the author of Innovation in the Arts: Concepts, Theories and Practices, a recent Routledge publication. White is one of the co-creators of the AAAE Undergraduate Standards for Arts Administration Education. Prior to receiving his …

Jason Price

Jason J. Price is an Arts Research with Communities of Color (ARCC) Fellow, working in collaboration with his matched organization to explore how social science research can contribute to a thriving and more equitable arts field. He earned a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from UC Berkeley and an Advanced Certificate in Culture & Media from NYU. His dissertation research, funded by the Fulbright Program, focused on the cultivation of endurance in a Pentecostal ministry in Malawi. His documentary short, The Professor, a portrait of former Interim President of Liberia, David Kpormakpor, has screened at festivals worldwide. From 2018-2020, he was …

Asif Majid

Asif Majid is a scholar-artist-educator working at the intersection of racialized sociopolitical identities, multimedia, marginality, and new performance, particularly through devising community-based participatory theatre, making improvisational music, and addressing the nexus of Islam and performance. He has published in a range of academic and popular media outlets, and his performance credits include work with the Kennedy Center in the US and the Royal Exchange Theatre in the UK, among others. Asif was a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow with the San Francisco Arts Commission and a Lab Fellow with The Laboratory for Global Performance and Performance. He earned his PhD in Anthropology, …

Raquel Jimenez

Raquel’s research explores socially-engaged creative practices and the distinct place-based logics that guide community arts organizations. This interest is reflected in her dissertation, “Taking Up Space: Youth Culture and Creative Resistance in a Gentrifying City,” an ethnographic study that examines how youth engage with public artmaking strategies to resist gentrification, while investigating how community arts education structures this process. Raquel teaches courses on art and culture at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and designs participatory community arts programs at the intersection of art, education, and cultural organizing. Her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation and the National …

Cameron Herman

Dr. Cameron Herman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and an affiliate faculty member in Africana Studies at Buffalo State College. His teaching and research broadly focuses on understanding the ways marginalized groups experience and navigate social inequalities in urban environments. Cameron has published solo and collaborative journal articles, chapters in edited volumes and online publications on a range of topics including Black artists’ response to gentrification, housing activism and neoliberal governance, Black masculinity in hip hop. In the wake of COVID-19’s onset, Cameron’s research agenda has expanded through collaborations with community partners and equity-minded scholars in …

Davinia Gregory-Kameka

Gregory-Kameka’s most recent research focuses on sociology of the role of arts organizations and their cultural policy landscape in sustaining or disrupting racial capitalism (Robinson, 1983). Her doctoral work (2015-20) was the first piece of research to fully document the closure, aftermath and legacy creation of a Black-led arts organization; the first empirical analysis of what happens at this point of stress. Such closures often happen quickly and are complex. They are sometimes documented after the fact using document analysis and archival material. However, this empirical, data-rich analysis of what happens in real time when an organization implodes is important …

Nazanin Ghaffari

Nazanin Ghaffari holds a Ph.D. in urban planning and public policy from the University of Texas at Arlington. She is interested in navigating disciplinary terrain in urban planning, public administration, feminist geography, and social anthropology to highlight the racialized, classed, gendered, and sexualized blind spots and biases found within conceptualizations of public spaces. Her research concerns inclusionary and/or exclusionary strategies incorporated by signature public spaces governance regimes through design, programming, policing, and management processes. She also investigates how design and planning empower historically marginalized communities through artistic interventions and bottom-up innovations to advance social, racial, and climate justice. Trained as …

Timnet Gedar

Timnet Gedar is a historian with commitments to community engaged research and social justice. She holds an MSc in Social Development Practice, and graduate certificates in African Studies and Museum Studies. Her work includes research, teaching, and practice in intellectual history, political and social movements, Black print cultures, museums, education, and community engagement. She is a daughter of Eritrea and a proud Chicagoan. Chicago SinfoniettaGedar works with Chicago Sinfonietta, an orchestra that has sought for 36 years to promote racial and cultural equity in classical music. Gedar studies why the sinfonietta was founded, how it found its feet, how it …

Ying Diao

Ying Diao is an ethnomusicologist and cultural anthropologist with research expertise in relationships between cultural production, ethnicity, and politics, and in the anthropology of religion, voice, and mediation. Her work has focused on the musical dynamics of cross-border ethnoreligious development and resilience among upland communities in southwest China and mainland Southeast Asia. Supported by the SEM Deborah Wong Research & Publication Award and AAS Publication Support Grant, her book project, Muted, Mediated, and Mobilized: Faith by Aurality on the China-Myanmar Border, examines how transnational sound production, circulation, and consumption become integral to the Lisu perception and striving after Christian faith …