Distinguished Professor, University of Toronto, Scarborough

Thy Phu is a Distinguished Professor of Race, Diaspora, and Visual Justice at the University of Toronto. She is the author of two books, Picturing Model Citizens: Civility in Asian American Visual Culture and Warring Visions: Photography and Vietnam. She is also co-editor of three book volumes: Feeling Photography, Refugee States, and the forthcoming Cold War Camera.

Director, School of Art and Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, Arizona Arts

Colin Blakely is the Director of the School of Art at the University of Arizona. Prior to joining the University of Arizona in July 2015, he was Department head and Full Professor of Photography at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, MI, where he was on the faculty for 14 years. As Director, Colin leads a school of 34 faculty and 11 staff in a school with approximately 550 majors and programs in Art History, Studio Art and Art and Visual Culture Education. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the National Council of Arts Administrators (as Treasurer) and until recently the College Art Association (as Secretary and Acting Treasurer).

Colin’s work has been shown at Fotofest Houston, the Society for Contemporary Photography, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Photographic Center Northwest and the Jen Bekman Gallery. Colin was a runner-up for the 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize and a Winter 2007 Hot Shot. Publications include Pause to Begin, Photography Quarterly, and The Humble Collectors’ Guide to Emerging Art Photography. He received his B.A. from Williams College with a double major in Math and Studio Art, and his M.F.A. in Photography from the University of New Mexico.

Texas Tech University

Dr. Kevin Chua is Associate Professor of Art History at Texas Tech University, USA. He obtained his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, in 2005, and teaches on a wide range of 18th- and 19th-century European and Southeast Asian art. He has published in journals and magazines such as Art History, Representations, Artforum, Third Text, Yishu, nonsite, and FOCAS, and has curated the exhibitions Assembling Animal Communication at the Landmark Arts Gallery, Texas Tech University, and Wolfcamp Catalogue, at the University of Texas Permian Basin. He is currently working on a book on Southeast Asian modernism.

Curator, Center for Creative Photography

Meg Jackson Fox is an educator, curator, and programmer based in the Sonoran Desert. She currently serves as Curator of Interdisciplinary and Community Practices at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. Prior to that, Jackson Fox was Assistant Professor of Global Contemporary Art at the University of Denver. Her professional life has brought her to work in a variety of cultural scenes, including Berlin, Washington D.C., London, Memphis, Sarajevo, Mexico City, Phoenix and Tucson.

Jackson Fox’s interests lie in contemporary visual culture, experimental storytelling, and community collaborations, and she has contributed to publications, exhibitions, lectures and symposia nationally and internationally. Jackson Fox holds a PhD in Contemporary Art and Critical Theory from the University of Arizona; a MA in Art and Museum Studies from Georgetown University, jointly convened with Sotheby’s Institute-London; and a MA in Modern European History from the University of Tennessee.

Assistant Professor, University of Arizona

Jeehey Kim is an assistant professor of Art History at the University of Arizona, where she teaches the history of photography. She is currently working on two book projects: one on the history of Korean photography and the other on funerary portrait photography in East Asia. Her book Photography and Korea will be forthcoming in the Spring of 2023. 

She has been writing articles on vernacular photographic practices as well as on documentary films and visual culture in relation to the Cold War and gender politics in East Asia. She is a member of the editorial board of Trans Asia Photography. At the University of Arizona, she launched a series of symposia on Asian photography with the Center for Creative Photography, starting with the one on Korean and Taiwanese photography in the Spring of 2022.

Los Angeles

Sze Tsung Nicolás Leong is a British-Mexican-American artist, born in Mexico City, and currently based in Los Angeles. His work is included in museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the National Gallery of Canada. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a Rome Prize recipient. His books include History Images (Steidl, 2005), Horizons (Hatje Cantz, 2014), and Paris, Novembre (Steidl, forthcoming).