OUR COMMUNITY
deborah a. thomas
DIRECTOR
deborah.thomas@sas.upenn.edu
Deborah A. Thomas is the R. Jean Brownlee Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also core faculty in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, holds a secondary appointment with the Graduate School of Education, and is a member of the graduate groups in English, Africana Studies, Comparative Literature, and the School of Social Policy and Practice.
Thomas’s new book, Exorbitance: A Speculative Ethnography of Inheritance, was recently released by Duke University Press.. Thomas is the author of Modern Blackness: Nationalism, Globalization and the Politics of Culture in Jamaica (2004), Exceptional Violence: Embodied Citizenship in Transnational Jamaica (2011), and Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, and Repair (2019), and co-editor of the volume Globalization and Race: Transformations in the Cultural Production of Blackness(2006). She also co-produced and co-directed the experimental documentary Four Days in May, co-curated the Bearing Witness Exhibit and co-directed the documentary Bad Friday: Rastafari after Coral Gardens. Prior to her life as an academic, she was a professional dancer with the New York-based Urban Bush Women.
ALISSA JORDAN
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
almjorda@sas.upenn.edu
Alissa Jordan is affiliated faculty in the Department of Anthropology, in Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies, and in the Graduate School of Education. She is a multimodal cultural and medical anthropologist focusing on healing, embodiment, and reproductive in/justice for Black birthing people in Haiti and the broader global health sphere. Using collaborative ethnographic filmmaking, audio production, illustration, and participatory activism, she explores the alternative worlds that Black women build through attending to their bodies and generating "underground" wisdom outside of, and in relation to, Western epistemes. Her work engages with the way that acts of self-healing and self-love critique the terms and conditions of reproduction under racial capitalism. In 2023, she was recognized with the Platinum Award through the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences for extraordinary contributions to the mission of the School.
She is currently finishing her first book, Atlas of Nanm: Bodily Openings and Encounters in Haiti. It is an ethnography of the embodied wisdom that women generate at sites where their bodies “open” [louvri] to the world. Organizing this wisdom according to the sites of mouths, uteruses, eyes, skin, and dreams, this book is envisioned as a multimedia atlas of life force, known as nanm, as it moves into and out of women’s bodies at these portals. Their lived experiences of care become authoritative sources of insight into the way bodies should interact with one another, and into decisions about whose bodies demand care. Prose and theoretical interludes are interwoven with collaborative illustrations--graphic concoctions compiled from photographs, diagrams, and medicines made by and with interlocutors. The book is under contract with the University of Pennsylvania press.
Azsaneé Truss
GILBERT SELDES MULTIMODAL POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
Azsaneé Truss is the Gilbert Seldes Multimodal Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Experimental Ethnography. She theorizes cultural production as valid forms of knowledge production, researching how Black expressive cultures act as sites of theory and resistance around the globe.
Truss holds a PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Here, her dissertation utilized cultural studies as a framework to research conspiracy theorizing in Black American art and media as a subversive discursive practice. This project explicates the culturally specific logics of these practices, understanding them as a type of vernacular theory grounded in critical understandings of racialized oppression. Through critical multimodal discourse analyses of conspiracy theories in Black art and media, this work seeks to understand how these forms structure alternative, subversive modes of knowledge production.
She has also published and presented work on radical imagination in Black media, dance as a modality for storytelling and knowledge creation across the African diaspora, and how digital technologies shape new modes of expression. As a multimodal scholar, Truss collaborates with fellow artists, scholars, and cultural workers to explore new forms of critical inquiry through visual and performative practices. Her work ultimately aims to expand the possibilities of scholarly expression and the futures we can imagine through it.
SENIOR FELLOW
ANGELANTONIO GROSSI
Angelantonio works at the intersection of anthropology, religious studies, and media, reflecting on questions of translation, coloniality, and spiritual traditions across multiple locales, including Ghana, the US, and Italy. In my research, They interrogate common delineations of ethnic, linguistic, and geographical boundaries by foregrounding the role of Ghana-based spirit mediums in the mediatization and revaluation of traditions such as Vodu across multi-continental geographies and Afro-diasporic temporalities. In their practice, they developed a shared approach to ethnography through multimodal engagement with filming and archival work. Angelantonio is currently working on a book project, tentatively titled "Spirits in Circulation: Digital Media and Indigenous Spirituality in Post-Christian Ghana"
COMMUNICATIONS FELLOW
HOSAENA TILAHUN
Hosaena Tilahun is a photographer, documentarian, and geographer in training born in Jimma, Ethiopia and based in the DMV/Philly. They are currently a second year PhD student in the Africana Studies Department at the University of Pennsylvania researching ethnic identity, national exceptionalism, and heritage tourism as mechanisms for advancing nationalistic goals particularly in Ethiopia.
In 2024, they directed and filmed A Moment in Revolutionary Time, a documentary capturing lessons from student labor organizing at their undergraduate institution, Dartmouth College. In 2026, as part of Professor Alissa’s Jordan Experimental Ethnography course “Community Youth Filmmaking,” Tilahun produced Gather(in) Memory: Archiving Hyperlocal History in Germantown with community partners at the Joseph E. Coleman Library, journalist Rasheed Z. Ajamu, and the Germantown Info Hub.
Faculty & Researchers
-
![]()
Julia Alekseyeva
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH & CINEMA & MEDIA STUDIES
global media; radical leftist politics; documentary film; avant-garde cinema; Japan; France; former Soviet Union; antifascism; cinema-truth; graphic essays; graphic memoir; author-illustrator; multimodal media scholarship; political modernism -
![]()
Herman Beavers
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH & AFRICANA STUDIES
20th-century African American literature; African American poetry and poetics; jazz studies; African American studies; medical humanities; literature and science; sound studies; modernism; gender studies; visual and performative ethnography -
![]()
Francesca Ammon
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CITY & REGIONAL PLANNING & HISTORIC PRESERVATION
urban planning history; built environment; American cities; urban revitalization; urban renewal; visual culture; digital public history; community-based research; historic preservation; public humanities; spatial analysis
-
![]()
Regina Austin
PROFESSOR OF LAW, EMERITA AT PENN CAREY LAW SCHOOL & DIRECTOR OF PENN PROGRAM ON DOCUMENTARIES & THE LAW
law-genre documentaries; visual legal advocacy; documentaries and the law; multimodal legal education; documentary video production; social justice filmmaking; documentary filmmaking -
![]()
DANIELA BRISSETT
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PEDIATRICS AT UPMC CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF PITTSBURGH, FACULTY SCHOLAR, & CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA
pediatric and adolescent medicine; health equity; adultification of Black girls; intersectionality of racism and sexism; collaborative ethnographic methods (multimodal health ethnography via CEE affiliation)
-
![]()
Rebecca R.S. Clark
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PERINATAL NURSING, MIDWIFERY, & WOMEN’S HEALTH AT THE DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY & COMMUNITY HEALTH, SCHOOL OF NURSING; NURSE SCIENTIST AT PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL
nursing; health policy; health disparities; maternal health and birth equity; multimodal ethnographic approaches to clinical research
-
![]()
Peter Decherney
PROFESSOR OF CINEMA & MEDIA STUDIES; DIRECTOR OF PENN GLOBAL DOCUMENTARY INSTITUTE
cinema and media studies; film history; media industries; intellectual property; documentary filmmaking; fine art photography; virtual reality; global documentary institute; multimodal film scholarship -
![]()
Nadia Dowshen
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PEDIATRICS AT PERELMAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE; DIRECTOR OF ADOLESCENT HIV SERVICES & CO-FOUNDER OF THE GENDER AND SEXUALITY CLINIC AT THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA
urban planning history; built environment; American cities; urban revitalization; urban renewal; visual culture; digital public history; community-based research; historic preservation; public humanities; spatial analysis
-
![]()
Margit Edwards
LECTURER IN THEATRE ARTS
theatre arts; performance; experimental theatre; Africana theatre and performance; transcultural African dance dramaturgy; multimodal performance ethnography -
![]()
Toorjo Ghose
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN SCHOOL OF SOCIAL POLICY & PRACTICE
social policy; urban health; harm reduction; community-based research; multimodal ethnographic methods in social work
-
![]()
Kathleen D. Hall
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION & ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
education; anthropology of education; immigration; multiculturalism; multimodal ethnographic research in schools
-
![]()
Sharon Hayes
PROFESSOR AND CHAIR OF FINE ARTS IN THE STUART WEITZMAN SCHOOL OF DESIGN
performance art; video installation; sound; public sculpture; history and politics; feminist activism; queer theory; public space occupation; collaborative performance; multimodal political art -
![]()
Jasmine Johnson
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF AFRICANA STUDIES; SECONDARY APPOINTMENT AT THE ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION
afro-diasporic dance; performance studies; black movement; diaspora; black feminisms; ethnography; gentrification; urban politics; West African culture; multimodal dance ethnography
-
![]()
ALISSA JORDAN
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR EXPERIMENTAL ETHNOGRAPHY; AFFILIATED FACULTY IN ANTHROPOLOGY, GENDER, SEXUALITY & WOMEN’S STUDIES & GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
multimodal cultural and medical anthropology; healing and embodiment; reproductive justice; Black birthing people; Haiti; global health; collaborative ethnographic filmmaking; audio production; illustration; participatory activism; self-healing; racial capitalism
-
![]()
Eugene Lew
LECTURER AND DIRECTOR OF SOUND & MUSIC TECHNOLOGY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC
music; sound design; recording; experimental and electronic music; multimodal sound ethnography
-
![]()
Ken LUM
PROFESSOR IN STUART WEITZMAN SCHOOL OF DESIGN
fine arts; conceptual art; photography; sculpture; painting; public art; monument and memorial studies; identity and language; Chinatown studies; multimodal public art practice
-
![]()
Kristina Lyons
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY
feminist science studies; environmental humanities; legal anthropology; socio-ecological conflicts; Latin America; decolonial science; multimodal environmental ethnography -
![]()
Jairo Moreno
PROFESSOR OF MUSIC; GRADUATE FACULTY IN DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
music; sound studies; history of music theory; aurality and listening; Latin American popular music; multimodal music ethnography
-
![]()
Brooke O'Harra
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE IN THEATRE ARTS AND CREATIVE WRITING; CO-DIRECTOR OF THE THEATRE ARTS PROGRAM
theatre arts; directing; performance; experimental theatre; queer archives and performance; multimodal performance and collaboration
-
![]()
Keisha-Khan Y. Perry
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF AFRICANA STUDIES & AFRICANA STUDIES GRADUATE CHAIR
race and gender in the Americas; urban geography; citizenship; Black women's activism; social movements; environmental justice; Black diaspora; political geography; multimodal activist research
-
![]()
Kate POURSHARIATI
CINEMA & MEDIA STUDIES ARCHIVIST AT PENN MUSEUM ARCHIVES
penn Museum archives; film and media archives; ethnographic film; archival studies; multimodal archival ethnography and public engagement -
![]()
Karen Redrobe
PROFESSOR OF CINEMA & MEDIA STUDIES, CINEMA & MEIDA STUDIES UNDERGRADUATE CHAIR
cinema and media studies; art history; film theory; animation; modern media; feminist film studies; multimodal film and visual studies
-
![]()
Timothy Rommen
VICE PROVOST FOR THE ARTS & PROFESSOR OF MUSIC & AFRICANA STUDIES
music; ethnomusicology; sound studies; Caribbean and African diaspora music; multimodal music ethnography
-
![]()
Jim Skyes
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MUSIC
music; ethnomusicology; sound studies; South Asian and diaspora music; Indian Ocean studies; multimodal sound ethnography
-
![]()
Deborah A. Thomas
PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY; DIRECTOR OF CENTER FOR EXPERIMENTAL ETHNOGRAPHY WITH SECONDARY APPOINTMENTS IN GENDER, SEXUALITY & WOMEN’S STUDIES & GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
political anthropology; sovereignty; violence; afterlives of imperialism; transnationalism and diaspora; race and gender; performance; multimodal ethnography; visual anthropology; Caribbean studies; documentary film -
![]()
Jeffrey Vadala
DIRECTOR OF THE VIRTUAL REALITY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LAB (VRAIL) & PENN BRAIN SCIENCE CENTER; RESEARCHER AT PENN CENTER FOR NEUROAESTHETICS
brain science; virtual and augmented reality; neuroaesthetics; anthropological archaeology; multimodal VR ethnography and experimental methods
STUDENTS
Sharnita Midgett
Aurora De Lucia
Cienna Davis, Ph.D.
Upcoming Graduate from Annenberg School of Communications.
ALUMNI
Gordon Divine Assah, Ph.D.
Writer, educator/researcher, filmmaker, co-founder and executive director of Educate a Child in Africa, a Cameroon-headquartered nonprofit.
Jasmine L. Blanks Jones, Ph.D.
Executive Director of the Center for Social Concern at Johns Hopkins University and theatre non-profit leader
Juan Castrillón, Ph.D.
Multimodal cultural anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and former Inaugural Gilbert Seldes Multimodal Postdoctoral Fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
Nora Gross, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Education at Barnard College, Columbia University.
Leniqueca Welcome, PH.D.
Researcher, designer, and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington Elliott School of International Affairs.
Lexi Welch, MFA
Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Providence College with fields of expertise in still and moving image, sculpture, sound.
Rudy Gerson, MFA
Artsit and art instructor working out of Crane Old School. Gerson teaches 16mm filmmaking at Mono No Aware, video at UPenn, and performance/installation at Brooklyn College, while offering videography services to artists and organizations.
Vy Trịnh, MFA
Researcher and artist with numerous solo and group exhibitions at EXPO Chicago, and across galleries in Philadelphia, New York, and Ho Chi Minh City.
Roopa Vasudevan, PhD
Assistant Professor in the Department of Art focused on labor, time, humanity, and critical self-reflection within relationships with technology.
Jasmine ERdener, Phd
Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Visual Arts at Koç University examining ethics, data, and technology.
Arlene Fernandez, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of American Studies working in collaboration with the New Jersey Monuments to Migration and Labor Project.
Bethany Monea, PhD
Assistant Professor of English at the University of the District of Columbia focusing on community-engaged writing and research.
Rain Jacobson, MFA
Visual artist, educator, curator, and social worker in-training.
Joshua Reason, PHD
Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University and multimodal scholar-artist producing a documentary named Brazil After Dark, a film about a Black & Indigenous LGPTQIAPN+
Azsaneé Truss, Phd
Gilbert Seldes Multimodal Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Experimental Ethnography, working across text, film, sound, and collage to explore Black cultural production as sites of theory, resistance, and world-making globally.
Rain Jacobson, MFA
Visual artist, educator, curator, and social worker in-training.
Joshua Reason, PHD
Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University and multimodal scholar-artist producing a documentary named Brazil After Dark, a film about a Black & Indigenous LGPTQIAPN+
Winnie W.C. Lai, PhD
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Music at Dartmouth College exploring performed vocalities, protest sounds, interspecies communication and intermedial ethnographic materials.
Maris Jones, PhD
Afro-Indigenous scholar, creator, and traveler native to Bulbancha/New Orleans, Louisiana, and the Lucayan Archipelago/The Bahamas. Visiting faculty at the School for International Training.
Nooshin Sadeghsamimi, PHD
Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Religious Diversity & Public Life at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.
Rabani Garg, PhD
Education researcher of digital literacies, youth studies, and critical platform studies at the University of Pennsylvania.
Melissa Skolnick-Noguera, PhD
Documentary filmmaker, cultural producer, and researcher focused on social justice and policy.
Oreoluwa Badaki, PhD
Research fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University and the Director of the Body-Ecology Lab.
Tali Ziv, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology at Texas State University, exploring the structures that connect community-based health services, mass incarceration, and street-based poverty in the United States.
Jake Nussbaum, PhD
multidisciplinary artist, musician, and scholar. He working at the intersections of creative practice and the social sciences. Exploring how creative practices such as music and dance transform political life and contribute to a more just social world.
LeAH GIESLEER, MA
Language arts and visual arts educator in Pennsylvania.
Mariela Morales, PhD
Postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania where she specializes in transnational media flows, technological appropriations, diasporic identity formation, and popular culture.
Alvin Luong, MFA
Artist and researcher of the Vietnamese refugee crisis that followed the end of the America-Vietnam War articulated through films, photographs, and sculptures.
Juliet Glazer, PhD
Anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and educator teaching at Boston College Messina College Program.
Pablo Aguilera Del Castillo, PhD
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Trinity University with a background in environmental studies and development studies.
Jiachen Sun, MFA
Landscape architect and former research assistant at the University of Pennsylvania’s McHarg Center.
Jixuan Guo, MFA
Landscape architect and filmmaker.