Florence Blackwell was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. She earned a BA in Art History and a BFA in Photography from the University of Colorado Denver. She was an active member on campus, where she had the opportunity to work in various student-serving offices. Upon graduation, she was a curatorial intern at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, where she gained direct experience collaborating with artists and nonprofit organizations, furthering her interests in archival research, exhibition production, and rectifying the representation gaps in visual culture. In 2022, she co-founded an art collective, serving as Curator, which offered complimentary professional development and access for historically underrepresented Colorado artists to showcase and sell their works at different venues and nonprofit spaces, including the American Civil Liberties Union in Denver. Blackwell plans to integrate her eclectic professional experiences in her practice as a curator, scholar, and eventually, a university professor.

Claire holds a B.A. in psychology from Oberlin College, where she worked on the relationship between social media and decision-making. A master’s student in the Public Humanities program with an Integrative Studies emphasis, she is particularly interested in exploring non-profit and policy applications for scholarship.

Christina Young (she/they) is a painter and arts worker whose creative practice weaves together visual artwork production, scholarly study, and public engagement. An incoming M.A., Public Humanities student, she holds a B.A. in Art Practice from UC Berkeley, where she developed her studio practice alongside studies in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Feminist Cultural Studies, and Post-colonial/Post-modernist theory. With a rich background working in Bay Area arts organizations including Headlands Center for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and the Oakland Museum of California, she is committed to engaging the arts as a vehicle for individual empowerment, cultural pluralism, and social justice.
At Brown, Christina will study aesthetics and methods of production at the intersection of queer and mixed ethnicity identities within art history and curatorial practice. In this program, she seeks to shape approaches to art history and public engagement that are deeply cross-disciplinary, with a justice focus that centers decolonial frameworks for research and presentation.

Ray Zhang received his B.A. in history with a minor in museum studies and peace and conflict studies from Colgate University in 2024, examining the significance of public history and collective memory in exhibition spaces. He was particularly interested in researching the historical development of the Underground Railroad and the abolitionist movement in the Upstate New York region. Examining international slavery history in London and working on his thesis at British archives in 2023, Ray is interested in exploring the global impact of racial inequality from different perspectives. He is currently completing his master's in public humanities at Brown and working as a fellow at the Simmons Center for the first year.