Red Emma’s

Dr. Lyra D. Monteiro (she/zie) is a scholar, artist, and organizer, and the child of a Kenyan-South Asian immigrant and a white descendant of several members of the genocidal Mayflower colony. She is currently Assistant Professor of History, American Studies, and Africana Studies at Rutgers‒Newark; director of The Museum On Site; and co-convener with aAliy Muhammad of FINDING CEREMONY. Her work focuses on the uses of the past in public culture (including her award-winning HAMILTON essay); and on the concrete decolonization of museums and landscapes. She is currently writing two books, UNCOLLECT OUR ANCESTORS: FINDING CEREMONY AND THE DESCENDANT COMMUNITY STRUGGLE FOR THE RETURN OF THE PENN MUSEUM’S MORTON CRANIAL COLLECTION (under contract with Penn Press), designed to support the many descendants of the ancestors whose remains are held in that collection; and LIBERATION ARCHAEOLOGY, which offers people of color raised in US education systems an alternative approach to engaging with their pasts. She tweets at @intersectionist.

Dr. Aja Lans is an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University in anthropology and Africana studies. Lans’s research integrates Black feminist and decolonizing theory into bioarchaeological investigations while questioning the ethics of curating human remains in university and museum collections.