Brisa Marie

Brisa Smith Flores completed her undergraduate career at The Pennsylvania State University. There she worked to earn three degrees, Art History, History, And Global and International Studies, along with three minors in African American Studies, Latin American Studies, and Latino/a Studies.

During her time at Penn State, Brisa was a part of the first class of students to participate in the DC Social Justice Fellowship where she gained pedagogical training to engage high school age students in topics of social justice, empowerment, and resiliency. She participated in social justice training through the Paul Roberson Cultural Center, facilitated workshops on race and self-empowerment as the Co-President of the Black Student Union, and was nominated for the Social Justice Award by Penn State Chapter of NAACP. She also spent her time as a peer mentor through the BLUEprint program, a mentorship program for marginalized undergraduate students.

Mentorship and collaboration are important to Brisa. When studying at UPenn she served as co-facilitator for the Philadelphia Intersectional Feminist Discussion group, She also served as a graduate mentor for PUENTE, a mentorship program for Latinx students interested in higher education. During her graduate school process, Brisa developed a YouTube channel that works to make grad school and grad success more accessible to historically excluded populations.

Brisa earned her PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA in 2023. While at UCLA, she worked as the Graduate Fellow for the Prison Education Program and served as a teaching fellow across the African Americans Studies, Chicano/a Studies, History, World Arts and Cultures/Dance and Visual and Performing Arts Education departments.

Her research focuses on cultural sovereignty, Afro-diasporic cultural production, decolonization, racial identity, and art. She has worked with major art organizations such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Association of Public Art (formerly known as the Fairmount Park Art Association), the Dallas Museum of Art, and The Getty Research Insitute.

She is a UC Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Irvine for the 2023-2024 year. She will also spend a summer residency as a Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.