My name is Natalia M. Rivera Morales (She/her/ella), and I am a recent graduate of the doctoral program in Hispanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. I am also a recipient of the graduate certificate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies offered at Pitt. Read more about Working at the National Museum of the American Indian: Examining Pre-Modern Medicinal Practices Among Greater Antillean Indigenous Communities ..read more

Ajibade Seyi Ph.D. Student in Ethnomusicology (First year) Read more about Sustaining Music Education in Lagos, Nigeria, and representing African Art Music ..read more

I am Josh Brew; I was privileged to be a Summer Immersive fellow last year. I successfully worked with the Legon Palmwine Band (LPB) and young musicians in Accra to explore music career sustainability strategies to help revitalize Ghanaian palmwine music (see more here). Read more about “While We Drink, We Contemplate”: Palmwine Music and Environmental Sustainability ..read more

My name is Stella Wadiru, a third year Ph.D. candidate in music (ethnomusicology) in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences at University of Pittsburgh. I am an ethnomusicologist interested in developing strategies for promoting music, dance, and drama of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) communities. Ethnomusicologists acknowledge that refugees and IDP camps worldwide are imbued with expressive cultural activities. Read more about Developing strategies for promoting music, dance, and drama of refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) communities ..read more

Hello! My name is Payne Banister, and I am a second-year Ph.D. student in Theatre and Performance Studies. My research focuses on the historical, cultural, and spatial contexts in which queer nightlife performances occur and how queer nightlife is experienced (and potentially reexperienced) through objects, such as archival materials, and spaces such as nightclubs, dancefloors, and public spaces. Most recently, I’ve been interested in how spaces and objects might be considered mediators for performances of queer sexual desire. Read more about (Re)Experiencing Community through Pittsburgh’s ..read more

Hello! My name is Alison Mahoney and I am going into my fourth year of the PhD program in Theatre and Performance Studies at Pitt, where my doctoral research focuses on performance and disability. I decided to pause my career in non-profit arts administration to pursue graduate study because I believe that academic work in the humanities can and should meaningfully inform cultural non-profits. Read more about Collaborating with Disabled Audiences for Film Pittsburgh’s ReelAbilities Festival ..read more

Sebastian Leal-Arenas (Linguistics) reflects about his Curricular Development Opportunity for Ph.D. Students. If you’re at all hesitant about incorporating new elements into your teaching, partnering up with a more experience instructor is the way to go. Not only will you learn, but they will also provide you with feedback, which could help make your idea a reality. I had an outlandish idea at first, and with the help of my advisor I was able to find a happy medium ☺️ Read more about Teaching Intonation by using Collections and Animated Avatars ..read more

My creative work is balanced between composition and performance as a contemporary music pianist. My compositions are inspired by multi-disciplinary interests: Gerhard Richter paintings, Beckett’s radio play Embers, films of Rouben Mamoulian, James Brown brass riffs, a Bach chorale. The incorporation of these external influences ranges from direct quotation to structural abstraction. Read more about Interdisciplinary Performance Laboratory ..read more

I am Leonardo Solano, a doctoral student in the Department of Hispanic Languages ​​and Literatures. I am about to defend my dissertation. My interests are cinema of the 1960s and new Latin American cinematic and literary narratives. My dissertation is based on a documentary I made about the condition of women in Costa Rican sports. I take the experience of making the documentary as a case study to analyze the behavior of Central American media production in a society lacking a working media industry and a market for it. Read more about My return to academia by learning about the benchmarkin ..read more

Elizabeth Kurtzman discusses her Curated Immersive Fellowship with the Film Pittsburgh in this podcast. Read more about Creating and Supporting Independent Arts with Film Pittsburgh ..read more