Brisa Smith Flores will be joining the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the History of Art and Architecture Department.
She was a UC Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. In 2024, she held an appointment as the Terra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship of American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of African American Culture and History.
She earned her PhD in Culture and Performance at UCLA in 2023. She is a winner of UCLA Institute of American Cultures Research Grant, Edward A. Dickson History of Art Fellowship, and honorable mentions from the Ford Foundation. She is also a member of the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society. Her research interests center on Afro-Latin racial politics, Afro-diasporic identities & visual cultures, Museum Studies, and decolonization.
She has worked at notable institutions like the Dallas Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Getty Research Institute.
In her free time, Brisa works to produce a YouTube channel (Brisa Marie - Future PhD) focused on demystifying the graduate school process.