Kathy Carbone is an Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute’s School of Information and co-founder and director of The Amplification Project: Digital Archive for Forced Migration, Contemporary Art, and Action, a participatory, community-led archive. She is also affiliated faculty with the Spatial Analysis & Visualization Initiative at Pratt.
Her research and practice integrate contemporary art and critical archival studies, exploring archives and archival practices as tools and methods for expressive resistance, fostering solidarity, and community building through collaborative preservation of contemporary artworks. Previously, she taught at UCLA and CalArts and was a scholar on the UCLA/Queens College Refugee Rights in Records (R3) Initiative for several years.
Before joining Pratt, Carbone served as the CalArts Institute Archivist and Performing Arts Librarian for over a decade, director and librarian of the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center Library in Kigali, Rwanda, and Public Services/Outreach Manager of the Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library System. Her publications appear in Archivaria, Archives and Records, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, The International Journal of Human Rights, Curator: The Museum Journal, Archival Science, perhaps, and Journal of Documentation.
As a modern dancer and choreographer, she danced professionally with Stuart Pimsler Dance and Theater, Jo Kreiter/Flyaway Productions, and collaborated with musicians, dancers, and visual artists in performance events across San Francisco, San Diego, Cleveland, and other cities. She holds a Ph.D. in Information Studies from UCLA.