Monica Rojas Stewart

Monica Rojas-Stewart (Lima, Peru) holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Washington with a focus on ethnomusicology. Her areas of expertise include the Afro-Latine communities in Latin America, the Spanish Caribbean, their diasporas, and their performance traditions as trans-border technologies of resilience and community building. As a community artist and activist Rojas-Stewart devoted the last 15 years to extensive community-based organizing, research, and artistic work as a pioneer performer and educator of Afro-Peruvian culture and of the Afro-Latine arts movement in the Pacific Northwest. She is the founder of DE CAJóN Project and Movimiento Afrolatino Seattle (MÁS), two grassroots arts organizations dedicated to educating about the history and cultural resilience of people of African descent in Peru and Latin America respectively. Rojas-Stewart currently holds a position as Assistant Professor in the University of Washington Department of Dance.