Christina Novakov-Ritchey is an artist, educator, and community engagement specialist. Her work seeks to expand the definition of education beyond the confines of the university. She asks how the idea of “study” can be used to develop new practices of learning in public space. 

Christina leads the Institute for Popular Arts & Education (IPAE), a conceptual folk institution, which seeks to reappropriate tools of knowledge production from the university to make academic knowledge more legible and accessible to the public. Using self-taught art and collectivist education as models, IPAE projects include sound installations, political education cassettes, study groups, and lecture-performances. 

Christina holds a Ph.D from the University of California - Los Angeles. She is the co-organizer of the (Post)Socialist Studies Group funded by the UC Humanities Research Institute and a core member of the Dialoguing Posts Network. Her recent publications examine incantation-based healing practices, racial capitalism, postsocialism, and peasant communism in the Balkans (1; 2).

Christina also teaches incarcerated undergraduate and master’s students in the Transforming Lives by Degrees Program at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Her courses focus on colonialism, magic/healing, art history, historical materialism, and performance studies.