The School of Art in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is pleased to welcome art education scholar, educator and community advocate Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis to the Visiting Lecture Series. Her virtual lecture will be held at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 21.

Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis is an assistant professor of art education at the School of Visual Arts in the College of Arts and Architecture at The Pennsylvania State University. She is also affiliate faculty in both women's, gender and sexuality studies and Asian studies. She received her Ph.D. in art education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Her interdisciplinary scholarship employs decolonizing, critical race and transnational feminist perspectives in the study of critical place/land-based, community art and media production.

She is the founder of Urban Wild, a community art and media program for urban refugee youth in Buffalo, New York. As a facilitator, educator, mentor and community advocate, she has collaborated with refugee youth for the last 10 years in building an alternative educational space for amplifying their perspectives. This space helps them build ethical relations to their new lands and promotes social and environmental awareness and change.   

"Michelle Bae-Dimitriadis actualizes social justice research in promising ways through her mobile cartographic project that reveals hidden stories from the personal voices of refugee girls," said Angela LaPorte, program director of art education. "We are excited to introduce her to the U of A community and learn more about her notable research."

Thursday, Oct. 21, Bae-Dimitriadis will present Land-based Art Inquiry: Community Media Art-In-Action by Refugee Youth. The presentation draws on decolonizing, land-based, and anti-racist perspectives to engage social justice-oriented art and media practices around social, educational, geographic and environmental issues.

Its inquiry is specifically rooted in community-based refugee youth art and media practices in Buffalo, New York. These practices exhibit how youths' stories and bodily movement can serve as lived spatio-temporal interventions to the social and ecological settler colonial design of an urban city from their perspectives.

All are invited to join the School of Art to welcome and learn more from Bae-Dimitriadis, at 5:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 21, on Zoom.