IN CONVERSATION

In Conversation: Intimate gatherings with thought leaders, creatives, activists, and advocates across diverse fields

July 22, 2023

Artists Engaging Communities

Reciprocity and Mutuality as Strategic and Ethical Tools

Interdisciplinary Artist/Scholar Ami Tamakloe interviews

Professor Paula Phillips

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Professor Paula Phillips is the recipient of the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) 2023 Medal of Honor, the 2018 Trustee Award for Teaching Excellence, the 2007 Distinguished Service Award, and a certificate of recognition from the Maryland State Department of Education for curriculum development of summer programs for Baltimore City schools. She has received citations from the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland, and served three years as coordinator of MICA’s Community Arts Convening & Research Project, funded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation.

Phillips is Professor Emeritus of MICA, a practicing studio and community artist and former Director of MICA’s Community Arts Partnerships. She is co-developer of the College’s MA and MFA in Community Arts graduate programs, both programs the first of their kind in the U.S.

As a fine artist, educator and social justice advocate and activist, Professor Phillip’s teachings, community art and art practice intertwine with and lift up the fundamentals of social justice. Phillips earned a BA through Texas Wesleyan University and her Masters of Fine Arts through MICA’s Hoffberger School of Painting .

June 17, 2023

Dr. AK Wright, PhD

WATCH/LISTEN: HERE

Dr. AK Wright identifies as queer and trans nonbinary, Jamaican, an immigrant, and first generation to high school, college, and grad school. They use they/them pronouns. They have medium brown skin, black locs with golden tips, tattoos, a septum piercing and nose stud, a variety of ear piercings, and at times wear glasses. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Wright loves their plants, yoga, baking and cooking and creating embroidery art.Following receiving their Ph.D. in Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota, they are currently a Black Feminist Thought postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University in Africana Studies and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Their book project, Embodying Abolition: Healing Justice, Black Feminism and Ending Carcerality, investigates how Black individuals communally and intimately live, resist and care amid carceral forces. Situated in Black feminist thought, queer and trans studies, digital humanities and carceral studies, their scholarship and research explores communal healing justice approaches to carceral abolition, centering the care, spiritual, and life flourishing practices of Black folks by tracing Black feminist genealogies of healing through historical and contemporary moments. They were awarded the Leadership in Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Fellowship in 2020 and the 2021 Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. In 2024, Dr. Wright will be an assistant professor of Black Feminist Studies at George Washington University in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies.

MARCH 25, 2023

12:00 (ET/New York City)

Dr. Melissa Barber, MD with Kathryn Hall- Trujillo, DDiv, M.P.H.

Kathryn Hall-Trujillo, DDiv, M.P.H. Global Community Health Administrator & Advocate Ashoka Global Social Entrepreneur

Ambassador, Federation of International Gender & Human Rights

For over forty years, as a public health administrator, community health educator and advocate in the public and private sectors, Ms. Kathryn has been addressing the racial and gender divide in women’s access to healthcare. She was the founding director of Birthing Project USA: The Underground Railroad for New Life, a global maternal and child health organization, which has provided technical support and resources to maternal and child health stakeholders in 13 countries. Her experience in understanding, translating and bridging policy, administration, services delivery, and client cultures has earned her national and international recognition, including presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Living Legacy Award and appointment as an official Ambassador by the Federation of International Gender and Human Rights (FIGHR), a United Nations affiliate.

Ms. Hall-Trujillo has also received the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Public Health Lifetime Achievement Award and is an Ashoka Global Social Entrepreneur Fellow. She is an Independent Scholar of the Cuba Public Health System, serves on the Medical Advisory Board of IFCO (the administrator of the U.S./Cuba Medical School Scholarship Program), adjunct faculty for Charles Drew University of Medicine, and visiting professor for the Cuba National School of Public Health, where she facilitates courses for U.S. students and professionals. Ms. Kathryn is a consultant and mentor to many community leaders, students, and young professionals, to whom she is affectionately known as Mama Katt.