Monica Rojas-Stewart

Co-founder of Huayruro

Monica Rojas-Stewart (Lima, Peru) holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Washington. Her areas of expertise focus on Afro-Latinx communities in Latin America, the Spanish Caribbean, their diasporas, and their performance traditions as trans-border technologies of resilience and community building. As a community artist and activist Rojas-Stewart devoted the last 15 years to extensive community-based organizing and artistic work as a pioneer performer and educator of Afro-Peruvian culture and of the Afro-Latinx arts movement in the Pacific Northwest. She is the founder of DE CAJóN Project and Movimiento Afrolatino Seattle (MÁS), two grassroots arts organizations dedicated to educating about the history and cultural contributions of people of African descent in Peru and Latin America respectively. Rojas-Stewart is co-founder of Huayruro LLC and she is currently the Assistant Director of the African Studies and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies programs at Jackson School of International Studies as well as part-time lecturer in the Department of Dance at the University of Washington.