The Department of Ethnic Studies UC Berkeley

Bio & Research Interests

Larissa Nez (Diné) is of the Mud People and born for the Mountain Cove People. Her maternal grandfather is of the Red Running into the Water People and her paternal grandfather is of the Big Water People. She was born and raised in Diné Bikéyah (Navajo Nation).

Larissa is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies, with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory, at the University of California, Berkeley. Centering critical Indigenous theory, decolonial theory, and the Black Radical Tradition, her research explores the relationship between Blackness and Indigeneity. Larissa seeks to articulate the ways resistance and survival, kinship and belonging, memory and futurity are intrinsic to the world-making that comes about due to, and in spite of, the world-breaking of colonial and imperial violence. Focusing on the work of modern and contemporary Afro-Indigenous, Black, and Indigenous visual artists and filmmakers, her research shows how Afro-Indigenous, Black, and Indigenous artists and communities are imagining and building worlds and futures that are dialectically and intimately connected to the past and present, land/water/sky and body, and the material and spiritual.

Larissa is currently serving on the Advisory Council for the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame and the Artist Initiatives Committee with Creative Capital.

Recent Publications

(Forthcoming) Nez, Larissa. “Cannupa Hanska Luger Essay” and “Mercedes Dorame Essay.” In Making in Between: Indigenous Americans. Pomona, CA: American Museum of Ceramic Art, 2025.

(Forthcoming) Nez, Larissa. “Pointing towards Resistance: Brian Jungen at P.6,” In Prospect.6: the future is present, the harbinger is home (Triennial), edited by Emily Alesandrini. New Orleans, LA: Prospect New Orleans, 2025.

(Forthcoming) Nez, Larissa. “Nihookááʼ Diyin Dineʼé Nihíniidlį́: We are The Holy Earth Surface People,” in Memories of a Suburban Ind’n | John Feodorov, edited by Dioceline Garfias Guevara. Bellingham, WA: The Western Gallery, Western Washington University, 2025.

(Forthcoming) Nez, Larissa. Review of Clitso Dedman, Navajo Carver: His Art, His World, by Rebecca M. Valette. Journal of American Folklore, vol. 138 no. 547, 2025.

Nez, Larissa. “Body, Spirit, and Land: Critical Indigenous Theory Imagined by Sky Hopinka.” you are here: the journal of creative geography, no. 25, 2024. School of Geography, Development & Environment, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), https://geography.arizona.edu/sites/geography.arizona.edu/files/2024-09/you_are_here_2024_0.pdf

Nez, Larissa. “Reuniting and Returning: Balancing our Universe through Weaving,” In Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Diné Textiles, edited by Dr. Hadley Jensen. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of Indian Arts and Culture and Museum of New Mexico Press, June 2024. https://mnmpress.org/?p=allBooks&id=350. 

Nez, Larissa. “Indigenous Cultural Revitalization: Notes on rematriation and preservation,” Arts of the Working Class, 1, no. 27 (July 2023): 40-41. https://artsoftheworkingclass.org/edition/arts-of-the-working-class-27.

Nez, Larissa, Brianna Nez, Angela Crenshaw, David Gassett, M.A. “Dyeing & Coloring” and “Homeland, Creation, & Cosmology” Educator Guides, in Shaped by the Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest exhibition, edited by Mary Adeogun, Bard Graduate Center Gallery Public Humanities + Research team and Publications team, 2023. https://exhibitions.bgc.bard.edu/shapedbytheloom/educators-guide/. 

Nez, Larissa. “Indigenous Power in Public Places,” In Jaune Quick-To-See Smith: Memory Map, edited by Beth Huseman. New York, NY: The Whitney Museum of American Art, March 2023. https://shop.whitney.org/jaune-quick-to-see-smith-memory-map.html.

Education

M.A., University of California, Berkeley, May 2024
Ethnic Studies

M.A., Brown University, May 2022
Public Humanities

B.A., University of Notre Dame, May 2019
Art History
Minor in Sociology

Courses Assisted

ETHSTD 181AC: Prison Abolition, Instructor of Record: Keith P Feldman, Eric A Stanley, Ianna Hawkins Owen, Erin Michelle Turner Kerrison (Spring 2025)

ASAMST 128AC: Muslims in America, Instructor of Record: Hatem Bazian (Fall 2024)

Awards and Fellowships

The Cobell Scholarship, Indigenous Education Inc., 2022-2025

Navajo Nation Graduate Scholarship, ONNSFA, Navajo Nation, 2020-2025

Borderlands Curatorial Fellowship, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, 2022-2024

Native Forward Direct Scholarship, Native Forward, 2022-2024

Native American Studies Summer Research Award, Native American Studies Program, UC Berkeley, 2023

Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry Summer Research Grant, Division of Arts and Humanities, UC Berkeley, 2023

Digital Storytelling Fellowship, Forge Project, 2022-2023

Conference Travel Grants, Graduate Division, UC Berkeley, 2022-2023

Chancellor’s Fellowship, The Graduate School, UC Berkeley, 2022

Katherine Sweeney Fellowship, Division of Social Sciences, UC Berkeley, 2022

Endowed Chair Fund, Department of Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley, 2022