More News July 11, 2016

Flexible classrooms provide space for students, faculty, and librarians to teach collaboratively and engage students in active learning and critical thinking.

Thanks to a campus technology grant submitted under the leadership of Associate University Librarian Ann Frenkel, a Rivera Library classroom recently underwent a “flexible” transformation.

Splashes of bright tangerine now brighten the space of room 140 with one end of the room serving as a dedicated whiteboard wall.  New lime-green rolling chairs and mobile tables encourage group collaboration. Flat screen monitors are mounted on three walls with a rapid charging station housing MacBook Pros for students to engage in multimedia learning and production throughout the space.  Mobile charging units are also available.

This spring, the campus Faculty Technology Support Group and the Library’s Research and Instructional Services Division hosted Re-thinking the Classroom Mini “Unconference” as one of the first sessions held in our newly, redesigned flexible classroom. Faculty came together in the flexible classroom to share best practices for online teaching as well as discussing effective approaches for active learning and student engagement. The attendees left rave reviews and thoughtful comments on the whiteboard wall.

The room is now available for booking library instruction sessions this fall.

More Current Exhibits September 19, 2024

The Rupert Costo Library of the American Indian is a testament to the advocacy, expertise and legacy of its founders.

Rupert Costo (Cahuilla) and his wife Jeannette Henry-Costo (Eastern Cherokee) have supported UCR since its founding, even helping advocate for a UC campus to be built in Riverside in the first place. They believed in the power of education, and fought for Native American students to have equal access to education throughout their lives. In addition to helping bring a UC campus to Riverside, the Costos co-founded the American Indian Historical Society in San Francisco, and helped organize the First Convocation of the American Indian Scholars, a pivotal moment in the development of the field of Native American Studies. Throughout their lives, the Costos have been on the forefront of expanding access and representation of Native peoples in higher education. This legacy is deeply embodied in all three aspects of the endowment they gifted to UCR: their personal book collection, which forms the Costo Library of the American Indian, as well as their archives and their vision for the Costo Chair in American Indian History (now Affairs).

This exhibit documents the history of the Rupert Costo Library of the American Indian, located on the 4th floor of the Tomás Rivera Library in Special Collections & University Archives. View this exhibit and learn more about the Costos, the American Indian Historical Society, and why the Costos chose UCR to house their materials.

Event	First in the Nation: A History of the Costo Library
Location	Tomás Rivera Library, 4th floor, Costo Library in Special Collections & University Archives (enter the double glass doors)
Dates	Monday, September 23, 2024 - Friday, June 6, 2025
Hours	View this exhibit during SCUA's operating hours.  Monday  - Friday: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.  NOTE: We are closed during UCR observed holidays.
Parking	Free Visitor Parking is available on Fridays, starting at 12:00 PM through 6:00 AM Monday morning in the unreserved spaces of the following parking lots/structures: Lot 6 Blue Lot 13 Blue Big Springs Parking Structure 2 Lot 26 Gold Lot 30 Gold Lot 50 Gold Paid Visitor Parking information can be found here.

More News June 15, 2018

After listening to student feedback, the UCR Library expanded its 2018 summer hours.

Beginning on Monday, June 25, Rivera and Orbach Libraries have stayed open until 8:00 p.m. Monday through Thursday, instead of closing at 6:00 p.m

Responding to student requests as well as the increased number of summer session classes, UCR Library’s Head of Access Services Vincent Novoa brought the idea to library leadership to keep the library open later during the summer.

“Summer quarter classes are held as late as 9:00 p.m., and the majority of the classes are scheduled Monday through Thursday,” Novoa explained. “There are a significant amount of classes offered in the evening and our students are looking for spaces to study. Having an additional two hours each evening will allow our summer students to use the library spaces and resources for their course work.”

Novoa had surveyed a group of UCR students who had taken summer courses, finding that many have full-time jobs, so they can only take evening courses. Others shared that they have evening labs, and having the library open later would make it easier for them to get the lab materials they need.

This led Novoa to conclude that increasing the library’s open hours would greatly benefit students enrolled in summer sessions.

He added that the libraries at three other UC campuses (Irvine, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz) have a similar summer session schedule.

Extended summer hours will run until September 26, 2018, after which the regular academic schedule will resume on Thursday, September 27, the first day of classes in fall quarter.

Current hours are always posted on the library website.

More News February 01, 2024

Learn about some of the authors featured in the UCR Library's Writers Week exhibit. View the exhibit in the Tomás Rivera Library until February 16. 

This year's Writers Week is taking place February 10 and February 12 - 16. See all the events (most are hybrid) and RSVP at writersweek.ucr.edu. 

Learn more about our Writers Week exhibit here and more about the authors featured below. 

Prageeta Sharma is a poet born in Framingham, Massachusetts. Her collections of poetry include Bliss to Fill, The Opening Question, which won the Fence Modern Poets Prize, Infamous Landscapes, Undergloom, and Grief Sequence.

Noah Amir Arjomand is a filmmaker currently enrolled in the MFA Writing for the Performing Arts program at UCR, where he is a chancellor's distinguished fellow in screenwriting. He is the author of Fixing Stories: Local Newsmaking and International Media in Turkey and Syria and co-directed and co-produced the feature-length documentary Eat Your Catfish about my mother's life with ALS. 

Vickie Vértiz was born and raised in Bell Gardens, a city in southeast Los Angeles County. With over 25 years of experience in social justice, writing, and education. Her writing is featured in the New York Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huizache, Nepantla, the Los Angeles Review of Books, among many others.

Cati Porter is the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the California Arts Council for 2023-24. Additionally, Cati Porter’s poetry has won or been a finalist in contests by: So To Speak, judged by Arielle Greenberg; Crab Creek Review, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil; and Gravity & Light, judged by Chella Courington. Cati Porter lives in Inland Southern California where she runs her Poemeleon: A Journal of Poetry and directs Inlandia Institute, a 501(c)(3) literary nonprofit.

Issam Zineh is a Palestinian-American poet and scientist. He is author of Unceded Land (Trio House Press, 2022), finalist for the Trio Award, Medal Provocateur, Housatonic Book Award, and Balcones Prize for Poetry, and the chapbook The Moment of Greatest Alienation (Ethel Press, 2021). His poems appear or are forthcoming in AGNI, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Tahoma Literary Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Melissa Studdard is the author of five books, including the poetry collections Dear Selection Committee. Her work has been featured by NPR, PBS, The New York Times, The Guardian, Ms. Magazine, and Houston Matters, and more. 

Minda Honey is the editor of Black Joy at Reckon, a newsletter has nearly 60K subscribers. Her essays on politics and relationships have appeared in Harper’s Baazar, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. 

Daisy Ocampo Diaz (Caxcan, or Caz’ Ahmo, Indigenous Nation of Zacatecas, Mexico) earned her PhD in History from the University of California, Riverside in 2019. Her research in Native and Public History informs her work with museum exhibits, historical preservation projects, and community-based archives. 

Elena Karina Byrne is a screenwriter, essayist, reviewer, multi-media artist, and editor. She is The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager and Literary Programs Director for the historic The Ruskin Art Club. She is the author of five poetry collections.

Farnaz Fatemi is an Iranian American writer and editor in Santa Cruz, California. Her debut book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر , was published in September 2022. It won the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, from Kent State University Press, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. 

Lisa Teasley is a graduate of UCLA and a native of Los Angeles. Her critically acclaimed debut, Glow in the Dark, is winner of the Gold Pen Award and Pacificus Literary Foundation awards for fiction. She has also won the May Merrill Miller and the National Society of Arts & Letters Short Story awards. Teasley has a new story collection, Fluid, which was released on Cune Press, September 26, 2023.

Quincy Troupe is an awarding-winning author of 12 volumes of poetry, three children’s books, and six non-fiction works. In 2010 Troupe received the American Book Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. Quincy Troupe is professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego, formerly editor Code magazine and Black Renaissance Noire, a literary journal of the Institute of Africana Studies at New York University, and poetry editor of A Gathering of the Tribes online magazine.

Reza Aslan is s a renowned writer, commentator, professor, Emmy- and Peabody-nominated producer, and scholar of religions. A recipient of the prestigious James Joyce award, Aslan is the author of three internationally best-selling books, including the #1 New York Times Bestseller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside and serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary and The Yale Humanist Community.

Rigoberto González earned a degree in humanities and social sciences interdisciplinary studies from the University of California, Riverside, and an MFA from Arizona State University in Tempe. González is the author of five poetry collections, including The Book of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2019); Unpeopled Eden (Four Way Books, 2013), winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the 2014 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

Donato Martinez teaches English Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing at Santa Ana College. His first full collection of poetry, Touch the Sky, was published in June by El Martillo Press. 

Jason Magabo Perez holds an MFA in writing and consciousness from New College of California, formerly in San Francisco, and a dual PhD in ethnic studies and communication from the University of California, San Diego. Perez is the author of I ask about what falls away, forthcoming in 2024; This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017); and Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016). 

Dave Eggers is the author of many books, among them The Eyes and the Impossible, The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, Heroes of the Frontier, A Hologram for the King, and What Is the What. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Kimberly Blaeser, writer, photographer, and scholar, is a past Wisconsin Poet Laureate. She is the author of five poetry collections, most recently the bi-lingual Résister en dansant/Ikwe-niimi: Dancing Resistance (2020), Copper Yearning (2019), and Apprenticed to Justice.

Marsha de la O was born and raised in Southern California. She earned her MFA from Vermont College and is the author of two collections of poetry: Black Hope (1997), winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize, and Antidote for Night (2015), winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize from BOA Editions. 

Cindy Juyoung Ok is a poet, former high school physics teacher, and university creative writing instructor. Her collection of poems, Ward Toward, won the Yale Younger Poets Prize.

More News April 07, 2020

The UCR Library is pleased to announce the following recent resource acquisitions:

Civil War Primary Resource Documents

Civil War Primary Source Documents from The New-York Historical Society contains unique manuscript material chronicling all aspects of the American Civil War from warfare on land, at sea, in hospitals and prison camps, and reactions and impressions of the War from the home front. The collection, comprised of more than 110,000 pages, focuses on the War as it was fought from 1861 to 1865 and represents both Northern and Southern perspectives.

Revolutionary War Era Orderly Books

Revolutionary War Era Orderly Books from the New-York Historical Society is a collection of more than 30,000 pages of historically unique material from more than 200 orderly books spanning from 1748 to 1817. The collection includes both British and American orderly books, a form of manuscript journals kept by military units containing their orders from higher-ranking officers in addition to other information essential to military operations, dating from the French and Indian War through the War of 1812, with the bulk representing the activities of American forces during the Revolutionary War.

Cannabis NewsBank

Cannabis NewsBank: Research Edition is a powerful, multi-disciplinary resource for students and researchers seeking information related to the cannabis and hemp industries. Its searchable database features current and historical news and information from more than 12,000 sources, including over three million cannabis and hemp related reports, documents and articles. This one-of- a-kind research tool features content from prominent cannabis and hemp industry publications as well as in-depth local coverage from every state in the United States, Canada, and countries across the globe.

New Sections of JoVE: The Journal of Visualized Experiments

JoVE is a video journal platform featuring videos that teach fundamental concepts and techniques for the lab.  Via JoVE, researchers and students can view the intricate details of cutting-edge experiments rather than read them in text articles.  The UCR Library has added two collections to our JoVE offerings: JoVe Science Education Chemistry & Advanced Biology and JoVE Immunology and Infection.

Henry Stewart Talks: Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection

HSTalks provides specially prepared, animated, online, audio-visual lectures, seminar-style talks and case studies.  Editors and lecturers are leading world experts and practitioners, including Nobel Laureates, drawn from academia, research institutes, commerce, industry, the professions and government. 

UK National Archives, Collections CO1 and CO5

Colonial State Papers

This collection, available on the ProQuest platform, includes Collection CO 1 from The UK National Archives, officially titled Privy Council and related bodies: America and West Indies, Colonial Papers and the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739.

Colonial America: Complete CO5 Files from UK National Archives, 1600-1822

Colonial America, via the Adam Matthew Platform, makes available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, making it a uniquely rich resource for all historians of the period.  The UCR Library has access to Module I: Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries, and Module II: Towards Revolution.  For more information on these modules, see http://www.colonialamerica.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction/NatureAndScope. 

Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings

This diverse and comprehensive collection focuses on the cultural study of music and explores content from across the globe.  Produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, the material in this collection includes thousands of audio field recordings and interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, slides, correspondence and ephemera from over 60 fields of study. 

American Indian Newspapers

From historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, American Indian Newspapers contains nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the United States and Canada. With newspapers representing a huge variety in publisher, audience and era, this resource allows researchers to discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.

American Indian Newspapers was developed with, and has only been made possible by, the permission and contribution of the newspaper publishers and Tribal Councils concerned. 

New Subjects from Oxford Bibliographies Online

The UCR Library has added six new topical areas to our Oxford Bibliographies Online collection: 

• African American Studies

• Atlantic History

• Buddhism

• Environmental Science

• Philosophy​

• Sociology

Oxford Bibliographies are developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, and offer exclusive, authoritative research guides across a variety of subject areas. The Oxford Bibliographies combine the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia and direct researchers to the best available scholarship in a given subject.  The UCR Library also has access to the following Oxford Bibliographies: Anthropology, Art History, Chinese Studies, Education, Evolutionary Biology, Latin American Studies, Latinx Studies, Music, Psychology, and Public Health.

More News May 22, 2017

Renowned science fiction artist Michael Whelan came to speak at the UCR Library on the evening of May 18, 2017.

“An Evening with Michael Whelan” was co-sponsored by the Riverside Art Museum (RAM), and ran from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm in Special Collections & University Archives. Whelan lectured to a standing-room only crowd about his career, his creative inspiration, and more.

Special Collections had also prepared a display of noteworthy books from the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy that feature Whelan’s cover art, which is still available for viewing on the fourth floor of Rivera Library.

The Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction JJ Jacobson said that she was spoiled for choice. “I got 555 results one way, and 568 another,” Jacobson said of her catalog search results.

Jacobson said that she could have approached the display design from a number of different methods, but in the end, she decided to highlight Eaton Collection books by authors that many consider to be the “Grand Masters” of Science Fiction and Fantasy, including Ray Bradbury, Poul Anderson, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, and Samuel Delany.

As the most honored artist in Science Fiction, Whelan has won an unprecedented 15 Hugo Awards (which is the equivalent of an Academy Award in the science fiction art world), three World Fantasy Awards, and 13 Chesleys from the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists. The readers of Locus Magazine (for SF insiders) have named him “Best Professional Artist” 30 times in their annual poll, most recently in 2014. The Spectrum Annual of the Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art named Whelan a Grand Master in 2004.

Other noteworthy awards include a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators, a Vargas Award, a Grumbacher Gold Medal, and the Solstice Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America.

The Riverside Art Museum had an exhibition of Whelan's artwork titled “Beyond Science Fiction: The Alternative Realism of Michael Whelan” on display until May 25, 2017.

To learn more about the artist, please visit: michaelwhelan.com.

More News July 05, 2015

Dr. Rubén Urbizagástegui, along with Cristina Restrepo Arango, has written another article adding to a long line of brilliant publications. His newest work, “The Growth of Brazilian Metrics Literature,” can be read in the open access publication The Journal of Scientometric Research.

Dr. Urbizagástegui has written extensively about bibliometrics. This work — an explanation of findings from his study of the production rate of articles, book chapters, and dissertations of bibliometric research in Brazil — specifically discusses not only the rate of growth in the production of literature, but also possible explanations of outside influences which have affected that growth. This quantitative study includes all literature on bibliometrics produced in Brazil from 1973 to the end of 2012. There is also a qualitative study of the same literature in a forthcoming article entitled “Bibliometrics, informetrics, scientometrics and other “metrics” in Brazil.”

Urbizagástegui and Restrepo explain that a quantitative understanding of bibliometrics within academic libraries may offer insight into how effective or ineffective search tools and methods are for patrons, and as a result how to better improve information access overall so as to promote research production across all areas of study. One of the most compelling discussions in the article focuses on a widespread perception in the early 1970’s of the lack of usefulness of quantitative studies in bibliometrics. It goes on to explain that this perception may have contributed to a punctuated production of bibliometric studies for the first nearly three decades of this study’s focus. Not until the turn of the millennium with the expansion and growth of technologic tools did quantitative bibliometric publications begin to consistently grow exponentially.

Reading Urbizagástegui's and Restrepo’s publication, an analogy kept coming to mind: information is the ocean, and libraries are tide pools. By looking at the microcosm of one, we can be informed about the whole. By forensically evaluating the effect of devaluing specific types of research and how this affects the continued production of research publications in that field, Urbizagástegui and Restrepo help to shed light on some of the causal factors of distinction or obscurity of research across all disciplines. With this in mind, the argument could be made that no research should be discounted based on perceived “uselessness” of quantitative or qualitative criteria alone, as the body of work will suffer due to a narrowed scope of consideration in the academic arena.

• Read more about Special Collections Collection Development Strategy

More News December 23, 2016

Our Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction, JJ Jacobson recently contributed a chapter to a book titled, Teaching and Learning in Virtual Environments: Archives, Museums, and Libraries.

JJ’s chapter, Crowdsourcing the Fictive Experience: Virtual-World Emergent Narrative from a Collections Perspective, is about the practice of Immersive Interactive Improvisatory Narrative, or IIIN.

“It’s a very common feature of virtual worlds of all kinds,” JJ explained. “IIIN is a modality of storytelling. There’s role-play, sometimes recreational, sometimes tied to history, as well as re-enactment and historical interpretation. It’s connected to speculative literature because many of these narrative interactions exist in a context that is speculative – alternate history, for instance – or occasions for this kind of narrative are in a context that is related to or is directly the speculative or fantastical imagination.”

IIIN can be traced to modern improvisatory theater forms, JJ explained, such as the Renaissance Faire; and it is often found in Civil War and similar reenactments, which exist to explore history and educate participants as well as audiences. “It’s an interesting question to compare those to the evolution of community theater, too” she continued. “All of these things exist in the real world, but with some specific entertainment or educational mission. One of the questions we barely touched on was: ‘When did IIIN start to become pure recreation?’”

JJ’s chapter is the result of three distinct discussions on the topic of IIIN. JJ spoke with an expert on living history in museums and places like Plimoth Plantation, a special collections librarian from a well-respected institution, and a professional historical interpreter who plays Mildred Cecil, Lady Burleigh, wife of Lord Burleigh, chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.

“These conversations opened up some questions worth thinking about, questions that nobody else seems to be writing about, but that people within the reenactment and historical recreation and virtual worlds talk about all the time,” JJ said. “We talked about the phenomenon and why someone might study it, what a research collection might look like.”

To date, JJ has not seen much scholarly writing on this topic, especially not with the same emphasis.

According to JJ, some questions that could inspire scholarly research on the subject of IIIN might include:

• What kind of activity is it, exactly?
• If we trace it back to various kinds of plays or theater, is that sufficient?
• What are we doing in an historical enactment, with its factual constraints?
• If a library were to collect examples of it, what kinds of research might that support?
• What kind of researchers might use them?
• What would a collection surround them with as secondary source material?

“The Eaton Collection is largely a collection of texts and other narrative forms, but stories that are already done and finished are not the only occasion for the fantastical imagination to work,” JJ explained. “So here is a very interesting way of creating something that could easily be subject matter in the Eaton Collection. If people have made up their own country and they act the story together and build it up as they go, that’s still the kind of thing we collect. Those kinds of worlds, those kinds of subjects are intensely interesting to me. Even though you won’t find those exact worlds in the Eaton Collection, you’ll find many like them in motivation, structure, and so on.”

The book was published by Libraries Unlimited in 2016 and is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers.

More News May 01, 2017

Fourth-year Comparative Literature PhD candidate and library student employee Sean Matharoo has a unique array of talents, experiences, and academic interests that should yield results during his Fulbright fellowship in Belgium later this year.

“The funding to pursue something like this is invaluable to me. It enables me to do something I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. I’m really honored and I’m excited,” Matharoo said. “I’ve been given the opportunity to work with Dr. Stef Craps in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University. His research is focused on the same things that I want to study: memory studies, the Anthropocene, postcolonial literature, and climate change fiction.”

Matharoo added, “The Anthropocene has been theorized by scientists as a geological time period characterized by humankind’s adverse impact on the planet due to the exploitation of land, water, animals, and fossil fuels. I want to problematize the cosmopolitanism of the discourse, which tends to sideline the question of vulnerability.”

Matharoo has been passionate about engaging with environmental issues such as climate change since before he came to UCR. He devoted nearly a year to his Eagle Scout project of building a drought-tolerant garden in his hometown of Inverness, Florida.

After completing his Bachelor’s in English at University of Florida, Matharoo was drawn to UC Riverside for three reasons: the university’s science-fiction program, cultural diversity, and geographic location. “I have always wanted to move out west for social and political reasons, and to be near the Joshua Tree desert and the film cultures of LA.”

Matharoo’s advisor Dr. Sherryl Vint recommended that he apply for the Fulbright grant to study in Belgium, knowing that he feels passionate about bridging cultural and linguistic borders while striving toward solidarity across those gaps.

“What’s really important to me is bringing into the classroom an emphasis on communicating across differences while upholding those differences at the same time,” Matharoo stated. “A lot of students – especially students who don’t come from families that are intimately familiar with the education system in this country – children of immigrants, first generation college students, and so on – they don’t always know that they don’t have to assimilate into one way of doing research.”

Sean credits his collaborative approach to research to his time spent working in Special Collections at Rivera Library with JJ Jacobson, UCR Library’s Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction. “Working in the library taught me that starting with a hypothesis, an idea, a problem or a question, and then thinking about it in a much more improvisational and flexible way, it ends up opening interesting new tangents that are actually really productive for engaging the question,” he explained. “It encouraged me to think of research not in terms of solo-authored projects but instead as collaborative projects.”

When working at Rivera Library, Matharoo cataloged the Jay Kay Klein photograph collection. “There are thousands and thousands of photos and slides in this collection,” he stated. “From the 1940s through the 1990s (Klein) was really active in going to science-fiction conventions and award ceremonies, taking photographs and meticulously documenting where he was, who was in the photograph. I worked on his collection, moving the analog negatives and slides over to digital metadata so that scholars, artists, or anybody who is interested could say, ‘I need a photo of Octavia Butler at this convention in this year,’ for instance, and they could easily find it.”

During his Fulbright fellowship, Sean plans to take classes at Ghent University, conduct research, and write the first few chapters of his PhD dissertation. “There are other PhD students at Ghent working on projects similar to my own. There’s a really incredible, thriving community there that I’ll be able to network with and learn from.”

He hopes to connect his Fulbright research with the Afro-Belgian community in Ghent through interviews and collaborative artistic projects. “I intend to superimpose interviews, field recordings, noise music, text, photography, and video into audiovisual sculptures,” he explained.

After completing his PhD, Matharoo plans to teach at a university. “I don’t want to treat my students as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge,” he said, “but, rather, to create a space where we can do the work of education together, always experimenting to create alternative ways of thinking and being.”