Marlène Ramírez-Cancio is currently Associate Director of Arts & Media at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, a multilingual, collaborative network of institutions, artists, scholars, activists and cultural creators from throughout the Americas who work at the intersection of art, scholarship and social change. Focusing on embodied practice—performance—and housed at New York University, the Institute promotes vibrant collaborations at the level of expressive practice and pedagogy, builds collections of artistic and academic materials for research and teaching across borders, and aims to develop the next generation of multidisciplinary scholars and performance-based artists. She heads up projects such as the Encuentros, week-long gatherings that bring together hundreds of participants to think and create together; the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library, an online archive of rare video documenting political performance in the Americas; the Hemispheric New York Performance Network, an initiative funded by the Rockefeller Foundation's NYC Cultural Innovation Fund to provide creative support for politically engaged local artists; and EMERGENYC, a program for emerging performers in New York City focused on “artivist” (artist/activist) work.