Marilyn Volkman is Senior Lecturer and Artistic Program Manager of the Vienna Master of Arts in Applied Human Rights. She is responsible for teaching, mentoring, and further developing the artistic and cultural theoretical orientation of the curriculum, nourishing connective threads between arts-based practices, the critical studies, and human rights.

Marilyn is an artist and curator, currently pursuing a doctorate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and has an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Chicago, an MA in Art and Design from the Sandberg Institute, and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Arizona. Her early work involved interviewing soldiers to explore abstract questions amidst daily work activities on military bases, while subsequent projects were aimed at repurposing art infrastructures to create intimacy across political divides, specifically between artists based in the United States and Cuba. Currently, her research investigates artistic developments in Cuba after the passing of Decree 349, a law that has criminalised independent artistic activity on the island.

Marilyn is the co-creator of the United States/Cuba exchange project ARTE NO ES FÁCIL (2008-2016), and the director of ENTRE, an independent project space in Vienna dedicated to fostering social and political understanding through artistic exchange. Her curatorial and artistic work has been featured internationally at the New Centre for Fashion & Design (Shanghai, China), Het Hem (Zaandam, the Netherlands), Bergen Assembly (Bergen, Norway), Sometimes Art Space (Havana, Cuba), The Centre for the Development of Visual Arts (Havana, Cuba), The New Gallery (Calgary, Canada), College Art Association (New York, NY), Renaissance Society, Hyde Park Art Centre, and Weinberg/Newton Gallery in Chicago, among others.

If you would like to know more about her work, check out her website: www.marilynvolkman.com