Originally from California, Jess Hooks (they/their/she/Jess) received an MFA in Dramatic Art (design focus) from UC Davis after completing a post-graduate program in performance studies at UCSC and a BA in Cultural Studies, Art History, and Religion at Hampshire College. Over the following decades, they collaborated with performance artists, barkeeps, scholars, neuroscientists, choreographers, event producers, and other thinker-doers to generate multisensory and participatory installations and environments. Their work toured at events and venues such as the Glastonbury Festival, Burning Man, The FIGMENT project, Southbank Centre, and St. Anne’s Warehouse. In 2016, Jess returned to academia, participating in the Erasmus Mundus Gender Studies consortium GEMMA, based at Utrecht University & the University of Lodz, followed by the UNESCO-sponsored Heritage Studies program at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Their artistic practice and research broadly engages socially-oriented, embodied, and participatory art practices related to political transitions, queer communities, and landscape-oriented archival tourism.