Devora Neumark, PhD

Dr. Devora Neumark, a queer second-generation Holocaust survivor born to refugees from Russia (Ukraine) and Poland, currently lives in Iqaluit, Nunavut, situated in the Eastern Canadian Arctic. With over 30-years of meditation practice, Devora is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, educator, and community-engaged practitioner.

They were a faculty member in the Goddard College MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program from July 2003 through May 2021, where they co-founded the Indigenous and Decolonial Art Concentration in Port Townsend, WA. Their research-creation PhD, titled Radical Beauty for Troubled Times: Involuntary Displacement and the (Un)Making of Home (2013), funded in part by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, explored the relationship between the traumas associated with forced dislocation and the deliberate beautification of home. Rejecting the notion that individuals who have experienced displacement or lost their homes should settle for the bare essentials, Dr. Neumark’s research underscores the significance of deliberate attention to aesthetics in the re-homing and healing process.

In July 2020, they obtained certification as a Climate Change Adaptation Practitioner from the Yale School of Public Health and later became an Arctic Winter College 2021 Fellow. Currently, Dr. Neumark serves as a Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sustainability & Social Justice at Clark University.

Their most recent body of work includes a series of co-authored articles and policy briefs about beauty in the built environment, such as “In the face of death, destruction and displacement, beauty plays a vital role in Gaza” [The Conversation, 2023] and “Beauty in the built environment and refugee self-reliance” [European University Institute, 2023]. They are also curating and producing a series of climate change and environmental justice performances and short videos. The latest project, “Letters to the Ice, Iqaluit”  (2023), is participatory project with Inuksuk High School students initially commissioned by the Walkabout Theater Company (2022). Earlier works in this series include: “In the River” (2021), addressing environmental anxiety and individual responsibility; “4 keme and 40 days” (2021), a poetic exploration of the relationship between climate change and food insecurity; and “Ginei as a Contemplative Practice” (2020), a personal lamentation bridging traditional Japanese art practice and academic research about the impact of development on the natural world. This body of work represents a decades-long commitment to exploring the nexus of forced displacement, trauma, and the transformative power of aesthetics. Their ongoing contributions to climate change adaptation and environmental justice exemplify a dedication to fostering resilience in displaced communities and shaping meaningful dialogues on the role of beauty in the built environment in navigating adversity.