People

Samer Jaradat is a musician and entrepreneur with experience in cultural music management and business leadership.

Jolene Rickard is a visual historian, artist and curator interested in the intersection of indigenous knowledge and contemporary art, materiality and ecocriticism with an emphasis on Hodinöhsö:ni aesthetics. She is former Director of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Programme (2008-2020) and Associate Professor in the departments of History of Art and Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Samir Joubran is an Oud player and composer and is using his experience to develop the music industry in Palestine.

Sonal Khullar is W. Norman Brown Associate Professor of South Asian Studies in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania.

One of Japan’s foremost contemporary artists, Yayoi Kusama has forged a singular practice that spans over six decades.

Before joining the Africa Institute in Sharjah in 2022, Professor Lalu was a founding director of the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa (2008–2019).

Nancy Lin is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University who specialises in modern and contemporary Chinese art and architecture.

Faustin Linyekula’s work as a choreographer, dancer and founder of Studios Kabako in Kisangani is intimately tied to the artist’s engagement with his home country.

Zeina Maasri is Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Bristol.

José Maceda was a composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist who dedicated his life to the understanding and popularisation of Filipino traditional music.

Nidhi Mahajan is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of California in Santa Cruz and also the inaugural Fatima Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Cultural Studies at The Africa Institute in Sharjah.

Gerald McMaster, curator, artist, author and professor, is Tier 1 Canada Research of Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice and director of the Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge at OCAD University.

Eva Meyer-Keller is a versatile performance artist whose work often emerges from a point of transition between visual and performing arts.

Morad Montazami is an art historian, publisher and curator.

Choreographer and dancer Radouan Mriziga’s performances explore the relationship between movement, construction and composition.