I am an artist, art educator, and researcher. In 2026, I left my position as Professor of Art Education at the University of North Texas to focus on my own artwork and on interdisciplinary, arts-based research and public pedagogy. Art Educates is where that work meets the schools, museums, universities, and individuals I collaborate with.

My teaching career began in classrooms and community spaces. I taught visual art, photography, IB Art, and English in international schools in Nagoya and Mexico City, and served as arts coordinator at the American School Foundation in Mexico City. In Chicago, I taught in museum and community programs, including summer arts camps at the Museum of Contemporary Art and teaching artist work with Urban Gateways. I have also worked as a freelance graphic designer and photographer in India and Mexico.

I spent a total of fourteen years in higher education at the University of Arizona and the University of North Texas, serving as department chair at both. As a chair, I started a university-level faculty mentorship program, and I continue to review promotion and tenure dossiers for faculty in several countries. I am an elected member of the Council for Policy Studies in Art Education and serve on the review boards of several art education journals.

My scholarship examines how communities create, interpret, and express culture through art, and how art education can respond to migration, colonization, and cultural difference. I co-edited The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art, Craft, and Visual Culture Education (2023) and Makers, Crafters, Educators: Working for Cultural Change (2018), and I served as editor of the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education. In 2026, the National Art Education Association honored me with the J. Eugene Grigsby Jr. National Award. I am currently working on a third book manuscript.

My foundations in South Asian art and visual culture shape everything I do. I trained in applied art at the College of Art in Delhi, earned my M.A. in Art Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and completed my Ph.D. in Art Education at The Ohio State University. Today, I bring these roots into both traditional and contemporary contexts through my artwork, my writing, and my work with educators.