Hui Peng (she/her) is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate
Center, CUNY. Her research explores disability studies, spectatorship, audience
studies, and dramaturgy. Hui is the co-convenor of the Performance and Disability Working Group at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) and was co-convenor of the Performance Working Group at the Cultural Studies Association (CSA). Her writing has appeared in Theatre Journal, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre. As an instructor, Hui explores equity-oriented pedagogy and alternative grading with students from Hunter College, Baruch College, and LaGuardia Community College.

Vallerie Matos is a writer from New York City. She is an English
PhD Candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center with research interests in Sound
Studies, Glossolalia, and Afro-diasporic literature and epistemologies. Vallerie is an Adjunct Professor in both the English and Black & Latinx Studies departments at Baruch College. She holds an MA in literature from Hunter College and a BS from New York University. Vallerie currently serves as Associate Director for Black & Latinx Publics at Baruch and the Mellon Foundation. Prior to CUNY, she was a Program Director for an arts and social justice youth development program for 5 years. Vallerie is also a Literary Fellow with VONA Voices, Screenwriting Fellow with Lambda Literary, Research Fellow with The Center of the Humanities’ Lost & Found archival initiative, and an IRADAC Fellow with The Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean.

Jin Wang is a PhD Candidate in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, specializing in modern and contemporary art in the global context and from the perspective of transcultural and intercultural exchanges.

Jordan Botello-Alcalá is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Philosophy at The CUNY Graduate Center. He also earned a certificate in Africana Studies under the direction of Nathalie Etoke. His philosophical interests are at the intersections of Social and Political Philosophy, Critical Philosophy of Race, Africana Studies, and Latin American Studies. Under the supervision of Linda Martín Alcoff, Jordan’s current research involves providing philosophical analysis of the epistemic environment that is shaped by the structures and social processes of racial capitalism; and how this environment produces a particular ignorance that functionally sustains the unjust racial and class structures. He is particularly interested in how this epistemic environment affects racialized minorities. Before that, he was a Talkington Fellow and Graduate Instructor in the Department of Philosophy at Texas Tech University, where he earned an M.A. in Philosophy researching the linguistic appropriation of racial slurs under the supervision of Christopher Hom. Jordan also taught high school in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. This is part of what fuels his deep commitment to anti-racist and abolitionist pedagogy in higher education.

Nikhil Ramachandran is a PhD student in the Anthropology Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research and teaching interests lie broadly in the problematics of political imagination, racial capitalism, and urban studies.

Natalie Willens is an educator, artist, organizer, and Ph.D. candidate in Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. They have published poetry, essays, and photography on the intersections of art and activism, and are currently working on a multi-year project with LaGuardia Community College students to creatively archive underfunded LGBTQ+ spaces in New York City and leverage their archival work towards concrete structural outcomes like reparations and landmark status.

Hayoung Jeong is a PhD student in the Environmental Psychology program at the CUNY Graduate center. Her dissertation examines the historical and geographic trajectories of affordable housing development on formerly city-owned land in New York City. Her dissertation explores the potential of the state’s partnership with grassroots Community Land Trusts (CLTs) for public land redevelopment to preserve democratic control over public land and address racial equity in land-use and planning systems. Since 2020, she has been working with East New York CLT and a coalition of CLTs, to acquire and redevelop city-owned land for community-led development.