Kristen Anchor (MFA) is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Media and Communication Studies Department at UMBC where she teaches multimedia digital production. She is an audio visual artist, curator, teacher, and musician. Her work has screened at film festivals, events, and galleries throughout the U.S.
Bryan Appel teaches kindergarten in the Baltimore City Public School system. He has taught and run academic and community building programs for students of all ages for the past 20+ years, most recently working on designing play-based lessons and projects that center narratives often missed in the curriculum like the Baltimore Peace Movement, the Black Panther Breakfast Program, and the Haitian Revolution. As a student in the Language, Literacy, and Curriculum program at UMBC, he plans on researching the role that rule breaking plays in the development of academic and social skills for young students.
Brandon Beck is an Assistant Professor of Secondary Social Studies Education and an Affiliate Faculty Member in the Department of Africana Studies at UMBC. His research centers on the nexus of Black education history, community-based pedagogies, and critical theory to disrupt deficit narratives surrounding students of color. Dr. Beck’s forthcoming scholarship includes work on teaching democracy through Black educator oral histories (Bank Street Education) and countering Eurocentric labor history narratives (Peter Lang Publishing). Additionally, his research under review explores Black preservice teachers’ perspectives on historic plantation sites and the role of critical place-based learning in connecting place and progress. He is currently documenting the histories of Black teachers as stewards of progress in his hometown of Greenville, South Carolina.
Priya Bhayana (she/her) is the Global Asias Project Manager. In this role she organizes initiatives that bring into relationship Asian Studies, Asian American Studies, and other disciplines to support pedagogy, research and community building. At UMBC, she helped develop the Asian American Public Humanities Internship, she co-chairs the Asian Cultural Celebration & Awards, is Staff Advisor for the Bollywood dance group Adaa, and serves on the Public Humanities Advisory Board. Her work in non-profit organizations, K-12 schools, and higher education has focused on youth leadership, cultural organizing, and institution-community collaborations. Bhayana holds an MSW from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Iris Blake is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of American Studies. Their research and teaching interests include sound studies, critical ethnic studies, queer and feminist disability studies, and cultural production.
Viridiana Colosio-Martinez is an educator, storyteller, and interdisciplinary scholar based in Baltimore. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Language, Literacy, and Culture at UMBC, exploring how Latine/x culture serves as an essential coping strategy for survival and a source of resilience in the community. Her research aims to empower Latine/x communities by preserving their stories and ancestral practices and by visualizing their experiences in the city. Currently, she actively collaborates with the educational program CIELO at Creative Alliance in Highlandtown, engaging with groups such as Artesanas and Jóvenes en Acción to foster and promote cultural identity.
Mia Karisa Dawson is a postdoctoral fellow transitioning to a faculty position in the department of Geography and Environmental Systems at UMBC. Dawson studies joint crises in housing, policing, and incarceration in U.S. cities. She does so in partnership with community organizations that are working to address these crises. As a doctoral student, she contributed to the development of community-based violence interruption programs and alternative first response systems. With a background in environmental justice, she has also contributed to studying racial disparities in air and water quality in California and contributed to policy recommendations and interventions.
Keegan Cook Finberg is the author of Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public, a book of criticism about the transformation of the welfare state in the United States after 1960 (Columbia University Press, 2025). She is also the author of a poetry chapbook called The Thought of Preservation (Ursus Americanus Press, 2019) about gentrification in a Nashville neighborhood. She teaches at UMBC.
Charmanique Goings is a Student Success Advisor and higher education practitioner focused on equitable student engagement and academic achievement. She designs advising initiatives and structured programming that support goal clarity, retention, and long-term academic success. She is also the founder of Miss Write on Time, a career development and resume consulting practice dedicated to empowering students and professionals through strategic storytelling and career planning. Her work centers on building practical, scalable tools that strengthen institutional outreach, increase access, and promote student agency.
Ellen Kohl is an Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at UMBC. Her primary research and teaching interests are at the intersections of environmental governance and systemic oppression with an emphasis on environmental justice activism and policy. Her current projects look at the role of science as both a tool of oppression and as a potential tool of liberation for scientists, policymakers, and activists.
Elaine MacDougall (‘99) is a former English department undergraduate student and is currently a doctoral student in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Program at UMBC. She is also a Teaching Professor and Director of the Writing Center at UMBC. MacDougall has taught various composition and writing courses at UMBC, including an Internship in Tutoring Writing course for students interested in working with UMBC’s Writing Center. She has incorporated community engaged learning in several of her classes, but is always looking for ways to improve her methods. One of her most memorable professional opportunities has been working with currently incarcerated students through the Goucher Prison Education Partnership (GPEP).
Tess McRae is an educator, artist, writer, and musician based in Catonsville, MD. Through her creative work as well as her role as assistant director for connective learning with UMBC’s Center for Democracy and Civic Life, she interrogates social norms and creates tools and forums that support engagement, belonging, and civic contributions in communities at UMBC and in the Baltimore region. McRae graduated from UMBC’s Individualized Study program in 2022 with a self-designed B.A. in Civic Renewal and Creative Expression. As a UMBC student, she was a Humanities Scholar and contributed to several arts and community-building initiatives on campus.
Cortney Merritt is a graduate student, educator, and clinician whose work centers on the intersection of mental health, identity, and equitable learning environments. She is a proud social worker who is newly embarking on a career in higher education. She is particularly interested in how the experiences of students shape engagement, belonging, and academic success. Her teaching approach emphasizes whole-person learning, reflective practice, and community-engaged pedagogy that connects coursework to lived experience. Cortney is committed to developing accessible, trauma-informed teaching tools that support student wellness while fostering meaningful partnerships between the university and the broader Baltimore community. She believes that when learning environments better support those most impacted by inequity, all students benefit.
Karin Oen-Lee is a curator and Assistant Professor of Art History at UMBC. Previously based in Singapore where she was Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore as well as Senior Lecturer and Head of Art History in NTU’s School of Humanities, she works on historical, modern, and contemporary creative practices related to the transcultural and the transmediatic, often centered on Asia and the Asian diaspora.
Mika Thornburg is the Postdoctoral Fellow of Global Asias and an incoming Assistant Professor of American Studies. She is a historian and Asian Americanist interested in postwar transpacific empire and public history. She has worked on several public history projects, including designing an exhibit and education curricula on Santa Barbara’s Chinese American history with the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation. She also served as the 2023-2024 Assistant Reviews Editor for The Public Historian. When she’s not teaching, writing, or researching, she loves hiking with her partner, Bryan, and her dog, Pepper.
Amy Tondreau (she/her) is an Associate Professor of elementary literacy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She previously worked as a literacy coach in New York City, the co-director of the Summer Literacy Clinic at Rhode Island College, and an elementary classroom teacher in Massachusetts. Her research focuses on critical literacy in children’s literature and writing pedagogy, critical teacher education, and the intersection of culturally sustaining pedagogy and disability sustaining pedagogy in elementary literacy instruction; the latter is the focus of her recent book, Sustaining Cultural and Disability Identities in the Literacy Classroom, K-6 (Routledge, 2024), co-authored with Dr. Laurie Rabinowitz. You can learn more at sustainingdisabilityidentities.com.
Shuling Yang is a literacy researcher and educator whose work centers on culturally sustaining pedagogy, multilingual learners, and equitable representation in children’s and middle-grade literature. Her recent projects examine name-centered narratives and their role in affirming identity and fostering inclusive learning communities. She has collaborated with K–5 teachers and community partners to integrate diverse books into classroom practice. At UMBC, I work to bridge research and practice, creating resources that connect public humanities with diverse local communities.