Co-founder & Faculty
Princeton University

D. Graham Burnett is a New-York-based teacher, writer, and maker who has worked with the Friends of Attention since 2018. He trained in the History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, teaches at Princeton, and was a 2023 visiting artist at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

Co-founder & Program Director

Peter Schmidt is a writer and organizer from Clayton, Missouri. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Baffler, The Brooklyn Rail, and The New York Times. Since September of 2022 he has served as the Program Director of the Strother School of Radical Attention. You can read more about Peter’s work on his website.

Education Coordinator

Jahony Germosen is a Bronx-based writer, facilitator, and education activist, born in the Dominican Republic. She earned her BA in English from the University of Mount Saint Vincent (2024), where her passion for exploring the meaning of language and attention in human life began to take shape. Guided by the belief that humans are inherently lifelong students and that the earth itself is our enduring classroom, Jahony's work is rooted in curiosity, community, and the transformative power of lifelong education.

Special Projects

Donica Bettanin is an arts administrator and project manager with a background in literary events. She has run programs for organizations in Australia, Indonesia, and the USA, including The Wheeler Centre, Lit Crawl New York, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, and PEN America. Donica is a mentor with Girls Write Now. She holds a BA in media studies from RMIT University and a master’s in nonprofit management from Columbia University.

Lab Coordinator

Quinn Marchman is a theatremaker and educator currently based in Harlem. He is the Uptown Community Educator with the Early Relationship Abuse Prevention Program where he works in middle and high school communities exploring the many dynamics of communication, boundaries and the beautiful struggle of being human. Formerly he has served as co-founder and Director of Education at the Black Actors Guild, teaching artist with Denver Center of Performing Arts and a fellow with National Arts Strategies.

Academic Dean

Henry Kramer is a Hudson Valley–based writer and educator whose work weaves imagination, deep attention, and experimental pedagogy to help repair our relationship with the more-than-human Earth. He holds MAs in Environmental Philosophy and Ecocritical Literature and a BA in the Psychological Dimensions of Religion. He teaches Religious Studies at Hunter College and serves as Program Director at the Center at Stone Mountain.

Art Programs Coordinator

Haena Chu is a Korean-born, New York-based contemporary art worker who seeks convergence between curatorial and pedagogical practices, with interest in alternative relationships to art that counter the logic of exhibiting and viewing. She holds a BA in Art History and Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University and an MA in Museum Studies from NYU. At SoRA, Haena is developing attentional practices for art and cultural spaces as well as the Visions of Attention archive.

Program Administrator

María Paula Morera Núñez is a Costa Rican artist, educator, and administrator passionate about creating inclusive, creative spaces for learning and community engagement. They hold a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Costa Rica. María Paula has worked in administrative roles at Museo de las Americas and in education roles at the Clyfford Still Museum and the Denver Art Museum, where they developed and facilitated programs for diverse audiences of all ages.  

Communication Coordinator

Mikayla (Miki) Greene is a PR and communications professional specializing in nonprofits and social impact work. Based in Brooklyn, she is a storyteller who loves using language to connect people and drive meaningful change.

Designer

Ali is a New York-based artist with a passion for image-making, experimental art, and game design. They are also a member of boshi’s place, a collective coworking and events space dedicated to building community for games and play, from a curatorial and creative perspective.

Managing Editor Empty Cup

Czarina Ramos is a neuroscientist and writer based in Brooklyn. She holds a PhD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where she studied the molecular basis of memory formation. Her work in science, art and political organizing interrogates the formation of the self within collectives and ecosystems.

Faculty
Princeton University

Jeff Dolven teaches poetry and poetics at Princeton University. His books include Senses of Style (Chicago UP 2018) and *A New English Grammar (dispersed holdings 2022); his essays and articles treat subjects from early modern prosody to player pianos. He is the founding director of Princeton’s Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities and an editor at large at Cabinet magazine.

Faculty
Wesleyan University

Sonali Chakravarti is professor of government at Wesleyan University. Her public writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, Dissent, and The Boston Review. She is part of the Wesleyan team that received a Mellon Foundation grant, “Carceral Connecticut” (2022-2025), to study slavery, abolition, and punishment in the Connecticut River Valley.

Faculty
College of Mount Saint Vincent

Leonard Nalencz is an associate professor of English at the University of Mount Saint Vincent. His recent project Let’s Walk Together is a translation of Quechua stories and poems into Spanish and English (published with Trident Press in 2024). He has led practices of attention at the New School, the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, the Universita' di Milano, Parsons School of Design, and the School for Visual Arts.

Faculty
Filmmaker and Sundance Fellow

Alyssa Loh is a filmmaker and writer based in New York. Her film work has screened internationally and been supported by Sundance, TIFF, Fantasia, SXSW, and more. She holds an MFA/MBA (film) from NYU Tisch/Stern. She writes for outlets such as Artforum, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The American Reader. She co-created the film series Twelve Theses on Attention for the 2021 Glasgow International Biennial; the book version (text + film stills) was published by Princeton University Press in 2022.

Faculty

Jac Mullen is a writer, teacher, and former Executive Editor of The American Reader. He publishes regularly on his Substack, After Literacy.

Faculty
College of Mount Saint Vincent

Kristin Lawler is Professor of Sociology at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. She is author of The American Surfer: Radical Culture and Capitalism, and a co-editor of two forthcoming edited collections: Roll and Flow: the Cultural Politics of Surf and Skate, and Live Theory: the Stanley Aronowitz Reader. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for the Radical Imagination and of the Surf and Skate Collaborative at San Diego State.

Supporting Faculty

Nick is a Brooklyn-based organizer helping people build the lives they seek away from extractive digital technologies. He educates communities on attention activism, advocates for more robust tech policy, and hosts events around the country to foster deeper agency and connection.

Facilitator

Eve Mitchell is a psychotherapist serving the Hudson Valley and New York City; she specializes in somatic treatment for PTSD. Her passion for attention directly intersects with her passion for the politics of care.

Facilitator

Educator, designer, and eco-futurist graduated in Science, Technology, and International Affairs from Georgetown University, along with certificates in architecture from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and permaculture from the Urban Permaculture Institute of San Francisco. She worked as Director of Experiential Learning at Minerva Project and now as the Engagement and Learning Lead at Biomimicry for Social Innovation where she helps leaders learn from nature to transform human systems.  

Facilitator, Study Corps

Connor has a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Edinburgh. Since high school, he has worked as a stagehand, construction laborer, engineering geologist, line cook, UberEats driver and SAT tutor. He is passionate about preserving the capacity for creative thought and self-reflection.

Facilitator

Haja is a doctoral student in Clinical/Counseling Psychology at NYU Steinhardt where she studies the intersections of the education and carceral systems, with an interest in troubling the underlying assumptions of Social Emotional Learning. Haja sees attention as therapeutic and is excited to facilitate spaces for people to deepen their connections to self and others. 

Facilitator

Cam is a Brooklyn based educator and organizer working at the nexus of prison reform and movement building. He currently teaches organizations and practitioners how to develop restorative justice and violence intervention programs. Cam holds a MS in Peace and Conflict Studies and a BA in International Politics from George Mason University, as well as a MA in Diplomacy and Human Rights from the University of Malta.

Facilitator

Raiane Cantisano runs an Ontologically based, trauma-informed personal and professional development coaching company. She (her/hers) is also an actor/singer, with theatre credits including the Flea Theater, the Women’s Project (MTC) and Planet Connections Festival; she has performed in venues such as Rockwood Music Hall and Bowery Electric with her band, singing authorial Pop songs. Her vision for the world is that all people have access to their inherent worth, lead a meaningful life and commonly experience connected intimacy.

Study Corps

Richard Dent IV first discovered the transformative world of clown and mask at the Juilliard School, followed by training with master artisans, including the Sartori family and Matteo Destro in Italy, and Ida Bagus Anom Suryawan in Bali, Indonesia. Now based in New York City, Richard continues his work as an artist, educator, and community steward.

Study Corps

Ethan Luk was born and raised in Hong Kong. He received his A.B. in Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is currently a second-year student at the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program at The Juilliard School, and was most recently a fellow at Dia Art Foundation.

Study Corps

Marcela Mulholland is a Brooklyn-based, Florida-raised climate activist. She earned her BA in Political Science and Sustainability Studies from the University of Florida.

Study Corps

Jonathan Gershberg is a strategist and satirist working at the intersection of comedy, community building, and local political organizing. His work has helped win elections and power grassroots campaigns for voting rights, tenant protections, and economic justice. He is currently the Digital Strategist for Mayors for Guaranteed Income, and lives in Brooklyn.

Study Corps

kyle Barnes is a brooklyn-based artist-researcher who uses community and computing as creative mediums, seeding ritual gatherings which facilitate practices of more-than-human collaboration. In past lives he's been immersed in the worlds of climate science, democracy reform, human-computer interaction, professional figure skating, and teaching.

Study Corps

Samvit Sengupta is a second-year MFA student in Transdisciplinary Design at Parsons, The New School. With a background in physics, creative technology, and game design, his practice explores how storytelling, play, and systems thinking can engage with complex social and political realities. His current research examines surveillance capitalism, political polarization, and the attention economy, with a focus on how game design, world-building, and rituals can serve as tools for inquiry and collective reflection.

Study Corp

Eleanor Jasmine Lambert is a writer, actor, weaver and community-member based in NYC. Her work explores awareness to disrupt structures of domination and nurture liberatory spaces, and spans art, journalism, advocacy, and self-inquiry. She currently contributes to SoRA’s Visions of Attention archive.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Désirée Eckert is a hypnosis instructor practicing intuitive, metaphysical hypnosis that is grounded in neuroscience. She believes hypnosis is a life skill everyone has the right to, regardless of lifestyle, ability, or attention span.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Kathleen Quiantance is a PhD candidate in the history of art at Yale University and a practitioner and instructor of a range of textile techniques. She is interested in the history of technology, modern Luddism, and artisanal knowledge.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Izzy Groenewegen is a Brooklyn-based urbanist, curator, and facilitator born in London. She earned her BA in Comparative Literature from Georgetown University and her Master of Science in Design & Urban Ecologies. She approaches the climate crisis as a crisis of relationship and much of her research and praxis is bridging the nature-culture divide within global systems and within herself.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Nicholas Miller is a Brooklyn-based multimedia performance artist, composer/improviser, and writer whose work is informed by mysticism and the Black American improvised music tradition. They studied music at University of Oxford, Utah State University, and University of Denver.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Amy Pekal is an artist and community organizer dedicated to presenting art through co-authorship and collaboration. She holds an MA in Art and Society from Utrecht University and a BA in Art History from Marymount Manhattan College. 

Study Corps

Hope Yoon is a New York-based writer and translator of fiction, theater, and video games from Seoul. She works as a narrative designer at LINE Games and is in residence at Soho Rep developing a new work of theater.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Maia Pujara holds a dual bachelor’s in Neuroscience and English and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Sarah Lawrence College, where she teaches classes on positive psychology.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Julia Kornberg is the author of Berlin Atomized (2024) and The Parties (forthcoming). She is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University in the department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Anna Beth Lane is a Brooklyn-based writer and thinker completing her M.A. in Media Studies at CUNY, where she focuses on complexity-based approaches to media architectures. She works as a writer and editor for mission-driven organizations and is the co-creator of Cybel, an experimental narrative project exploring technology and spirituality.

Spring 26’ Faculty

Julie Hill is a Brooklyn-based vocalist/composer who writes a variety of music. She studied music composition at the Manhattan School of Music, and has toured through India, UK/Europe and the US as a vocalist. Her most recent album is a collection of ambient and experimental pieces exploring love, loss, and memory called "glow serene" (Umé Records, Japan).

Spring 26’ Faculty

Andrea Sisson is a filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist, and educator whose work bridges experimental documentary, social project, and psychoanalytic inquiry. A Fulbright Fellow, Sisson holds an MFA from Bard College and an MSW focused on psychodynamic study from Hunter College.