Ayasha Guerin

Wall Scholar

Title

Assistant Professor

Department/School

English

Faculty

Arts

University

UBC

Ayasha Guerin is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and assistant professor of Black Diaspora studies in the department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. Her ongoing research considers how socio-ecological histories have shaped discourse about those places that are expected to be swallowed by rising waters in the next century: coastlines and islands, with specific investment in socio-ecological stories about Black and Indigenous communities, as well as the animal and plant life they have lived with in both conflict and symbiosis at the shoreline.

Dr. Guerin is invested in art practices that are also forms of activism and believes a responsibility of the research profession is to make knowledge accessible through public actions and exhibitions. Ongoing collaborative art, research and curatorial projects include Black Art Action Berlin and Curating Through Conflict with Care (CCC).

Primary Recipient Awards

Ayasha Guerin – Wall Scholars – 2022

During her fellowship year, Dr. Guerin will be finishing her manuscript “Making Zone A: Race Nature and Resilience on New York’s Most Vulnerable Shores,” which turns to environmental and labor histories, maps, law, archeology, geology, fiction, memoir, slave notices and theoretical work in Black and Indigenous studies to tell a longer story about colonial history and the racial anthropocene responsible for New York’s flood zone.

She will also establish the Liberated Planet Studio (LPS), a place to bring local creatives into dialogue with researchers about our common problematic inheritances: colonialism and climate change, while facilitating a local need for artists’ access to affordable studio space in Vancouver.

Events

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