Nydia A. Swaby is a Black feminist researcher, writer, and curator based in London. She holds a PhD in Gender Studies [SOAS], an MA in Women’s History [Sarah Lawrence College], and a BA in Anthropology and African American Studies [Rollins College]. Her practice builds on theories of racial, gendered, diasporic, and queer formation, Black feminism, Black studies, and my previous experience working at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
In Nydia's creative approach to knowledge production, she uses archives, ethnography, photography, film, and the imagination to curate programs and visual narratives, write essays and performance pieces exploring the gendered and diasporic dimensions of Black being and becoming. She also creates ancestral altars using family pictures and memorabilia, found photographs and archival images, West African textiles and wood carvings, crystals, fossils, stones, shells, and other curios. These practices converge in her forthcoming monograph, Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Back Feminist Archives (Lawrence Wishart, Summer 2022) and Caird Research Fellowship at The National Maritime Museum, ‘Curating Archives of Affect: Black Feminist Pasts, Presents, and Futures’ (December 2021 - September 2020), and my ongoing visual series, ‘Becoming with Archive: Blackness, Gender, Diaspora’ (2010 - Present).
Alongside this practice-based research, I work as the Curator of Learning at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where I collaborate with academics, curators, artists, and writers to develop a multi-disciplinary, practice-based research and learning program. I’m also a member of Feminist Review’s Editorial Collective and the Curator of Programmes, and co-edited a recent issue on queer, feminist, diasporic, and decolonial archives. This portfolio highlights my independent research, visual, and curatorial work.
Nydia Swaby has been a guest on 3 episodes.
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Episode 224: #tbt...Jamaica with Stacy Kirk, Andray McKenzie, Beverley Watson, Suki Fuller, Morris Sinclair, Natasha Moore, and Nydia Swaby
May 28th, 2024 | 54 mins 31 secs
andray mckenzie, beverley watson, glocal citizens podcast, jamaica, leap transmedia productions, may day, memorial day, morris sinclair, natasha d. moore, nydia a. swaby, stacy kirk, suki fuller
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Episode 167: Herstories 2023: What is your Craft?
March 28th, 2023 | 58 mins 59 secs
author, black feminist researcher, black people breathe, curator, dereca blackmon, detroit, ekua yankah, emotional justice, entrepreneur, esther armah, germany, ghana, glocal citizens podcast, healing in breathing, herstories, humanitarian cocreating, inclusion design group, inclusion innovator, international development, jamaica, journalist, leap transmedia, mindfulness practitioner, nigeria, nydia swaby, philippines, researcher, sarah adeyinka, storytelling for structural change, thought leader, uk, uncommon conversations, womens history month, writer, zee clarke
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Episode 118: Archives, Art and Freedom Dreams with Nydia Swaby
March 29th, 2022 | 57 mins 18 secs
curator, feminist, ghana, glocal citizens podcast, herstories, institute of contemporary arts, jamaica, leap transmedia, nydia a. swaby, researcher, uk, us, womens history month, writer