Lauren Baines

de Saisset Museum

Lauren is an artist, curator, and catalyst interested in interdisciplinary explorations and helping others find synergies between diverse subjects. Her projects with the de Saisset Museum focus on Indigenous and decolonization efforts at the museum and across SCU; bringing transparency and transformation to traditional processes of collecting and curating; addressing histories of racism, colonization, and exclusion within the field and beyond; and centering social justice and SCU’s undergraduate students in the work of the museum. She is also the Ohlone Initiatives Implementation Co-Coordinator at SCU, a Board member of the California Association of Museums, and a practicing choreographer/dancer.

Nicole Branch

University Library

Nicole is the Dean of the University Library at Santa Clara University. In her time at Santa Clara, Nicole has also held the positions of Associate University Librarian, Head of Instruction & Assessment, and Assessment Coordinator & Instruction Librarian. Prior to becoming a librarian, Nicole worked for over a decade in non-profit organizations that advanced educational and racial justice in public schools and districts in the East Bay and San Francisco– work that continues to inform her approach to librarianship.  Nicole’s scholarship focuses on the intersections of critical theory, research methodologies, and information literacy.

Meilin Chinn

Philosophy

Meilin Chinn is a philosopher and teacher of Chinese Philosophy, Aesthetics, Environmental Philosophy, and Buddhism. Across her work, Chinn focuses on broadening the cultural and conceptual boundaries of philosophy. Her current projects include a book about musical meaning (Listening into the Distance) and a series of essays on Daoism, nature, and environmental crisis. Chinn also maintains a long-running scholarly and artistic investigation into the void. 

Justin Clardy

Philosophy

Justin Clardy is an assistant professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Arkansas. His recent publications have investigated the intersection of love & race, and have largely focused on both the ethicality of non-monogamous relationship styles and the unjust political consequences for non-monogamists.

Sonia Gomez

History

Sonia C. Gomez is an Assistant Professor of History at Santa Clara University. As a historian of the 20th-century United States, she is interested in race and ethnic relations; gender, sexuality, and intimacy; and migration and diaspora. Her first book, Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America (forthcoming) examines the ways in which marriage created pockets of legal and social inclusion for Japanese women during a period of racial inclusion. Her next project tentatively titled, "Across Barbed Wire and Racial Lines", explores Japanese American incarceration through interracial female friendship. She has published in the Journal of American Ethnic History and Amerasia.

Allia Griffin

Ethnic Studies

Allia Griffin specializes in contemporary multi-ethnic literature, performance, and cultural studies. Her work is invested in how writers and artists, by working to document their own histories, resist state-sanctioned violence and erasure. Her current book project examines how cultural texts by contemporary writers emerging from the Iranian diaspora disavow the social, political, and legal definitions placed upon their bodies in the US. Griffin was a recent CAH faculty fellow for her project on “The Afterlife of Loss: On Writing from the Iranian Diaspora.”

Scot Hanna-Weir

Music

Scot is Director of Choral Activities, conducting the University's two major choral ensembles, and Artistic Director of the Santa Clara Chorale, an auditioned community choir celebrating its 60th anniversary season. In addition to his conducting engagements, Scot is also an active composer with a particular focus on fusing electronics and choral performance and addressing issues of social justice and inequity through choral literature. 

Kai Harris

English

Kai is an author and professor of creative writing who specializes in fiction, African Diaspora writing, and the slave narrative genre. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, What the Fireflies Knew (February 2022, Tiny Reparations Books) is a coming-of-age novel that explores family dynamics and generational trauma through the lens of Black Girlhood. In addition to fiction, Kai has published poetry, personal essays, and peer-reviewed academic articles on topics related to Black girlhood and womanhood, mental health, social justice, generational trauma, and Black identity.

Mythri Jegathesan

Anthropology

Mythri is a cultural anthropologist who researches gender and work relations, plantations, and contemporary minority politics in South Asia. She writes about gender and kinship investment, home-making practices, plantation studies, and state-industrial relations in Sri Lanka. Her book, Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Postwar Sri Lanka (University of Washington Press, 2019) is an ethnography of plantation life and work in the context of ethnonationalist violence and civil war in Sri Lanka. Her work has appeared in Himal Southasian, Cultural Anthropology, Feminist Anthropology, Anthropological Quarterly, Commoning Ethnography, e-flux journal, Colomboscope Interdisciplinary Art Festival, and Scroll Projects on Paper.

Brian Thorstenson

Theatre and Dance

Brian is a San Francisco-based writer, teacher, and occasional performer. Brian was a founding member of The Z Collective and one of the first resident artists of the Z Space. He is an alumnus of the Resident Playwright Program of the Playwrights Foundation and one of the founding members of 6NewPlays. His last series of projects included Dearly Gathered with choreographers Rowena Richie, Christy Funsch, and Chris Black, Fugue with Detour Dance, and Wakefield with 6NewPlays. His poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Burning House Press, Lambda Literary Review, and New American Writing. His next project is We Build Houses Here with Detour. He is a Senior Lecturer in Playwriting and Devised Theater at Santa Clara University and has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.