They’re mixing art and activism.
Six Hunter College affiliates were among the 32 artists, writers, and scholars who were named as 2024–25 fellows of Social Practice CUNY, a Mellon Foundation-funded initiative based at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Christina Freeman, Tao Leigh Goffe, Esther Marveta Neff, and Jess Shane were named Faculty Fellows, while graduate students Ali Motamedi and ingrid romero were named Actionist Fellows.
This year’s fellows are an interdisciplinary group of visual and performing artists, writers, organizers, educators, documentarians, media-makers, and scholars from 13 CUNY campuses. Each Faculty and Actionist Fellow will receive an unrestricted $3,000 grant, and each Student Fellow will receive one year of in-state tuition plus $2,000 to support their social practice project, totaling $136,360 in funding and scholarships for this year’s cohort, and over $461,540 in distributed project funding and scholarships since the program’s inception in 2021.
From left: Christina Freeman, Tao Leigh Goffe, Esther Marveta Neff, Jess Shane, Ali Motamedi, ingrid romero
About Hunter’s Fellows
Christina Freeman is a conceptual artist working in performance, installation, and photography. Appropriating familiar institutions such as the library, tech support, and lemonade stand, she makes spaces for the audience to co-create with her. Her projects have been featured in Artforum, Vulture, Hyperallergic, Art F City, and others.
Tao Leigh Goffe is an associate professor at Hunter of Literary Theory and Cultural History with a focus on the humanities and Geology. She joined the Department of Africana Studies after more than a decade of research and teaching on Black feminism.
Esther Marveta Neff is the founder of PPL, a performance collective, experimental philosophy think tank, and organizational entity. PPL was a physical lab site for 7 years and the collective has made more than a dozen “operas of operations,” including Embarrassed of the (W)Hole (operating manual published by Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023).
Jess Shane is a radio producer, artist, and educator whose work has played at film and audio festivals internationally including DOCNYC, New Orleans Film Festival, Based on a True Story Conference, Open City Documentary Festival, and the International Features Conference. In 2023, Shane was awarded a reporting grant from the International Women’s Media Fund for her podcast Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative, distributed by Radiotopia.
Ali Motamedi is an author, artist, and educator, exploring travel, immigration, and identity. With a PhD in civil engineering and Fine Arts studies at CUNY, he combines technical and artistic visions.
ingrid romero is an artist, educator, and community organizer, born and raised in NYC, with more than a decade of facilitation, education, community arts, and youth work experience. romero has a BA in Art Education, with certification in Teaching Art K-12, from CCNY. She is pursuing an MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter while working as an arts educator at City-As-School.
