Alison Kibbe

Alison Hall Kibbe  is a PhD student in African-American Studies and American Studies. She  is a scholar, multidisciplinary artist, cultural organizer, and producer. Her work is grounded  in engaged research, creative practice, embodiment, and collaboration. Her research looks at Black multiracial identity, migration, and transnationalism in the Americas, with a focus on borderlands as both geographic areas and emotional states. She is interested in the possibilities and significances of the body and movement, particularly how subjects negotiate and co-create borderlands in the aftermaths of colonialism and slavery through migratory, corporal, and social movement. Her research is based in Cuba, Jamaica, the US South, and Brazil. Her graduate research builds from her current creative project, body/s  in question,  a choreopoetic performance  that moves through her family’s  histories of migration and home-making  in Jamaica, Cuba, Panama, and the United States. In her creative work, Alison works with dance, performance, literary arts and dialogue, using oral history and ethnographic research to guide the development of multi-faceted storytelling experiences.

Alison graduated from Duke University in 2012, B.A. cum laude with distinction in Cultural Anthropology and Public Policy, where her work focused on the role of embodied traditions and oral history in navigating and resisting displacement across the Black Diaspora, including in Brazil, South Africa, and Chapel Hill, NC. Before coming to Yale, Alison worked as an independent artist, producer, and cultural organizer and consultant in Cuba and New York City. More at alisonkibbe.com.