Cynthia Tobar

Cynthia Tobar (she/her/ella) is an Ecuadorian American artist, activist-scholar, filmmaker and oral historian and Associate Professor/Head Librarian at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Centro). Born and raised in NYC, she strives to blend rigorous research with diverse artistic mediums to highlight the meaningful impact local residents have as they resist increasing social and economic inequalities imposed on their communities. She is the founder of two ongoing oral history projects: Cities for People, Not for Profit, which centers stories of gentrification and displacement in her neighborhood of Bushwick, Brooklyn, and the WRI Oral History Project, which documents the Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI), a grassroots student activist and community leadership training organization at Hunter College that fights to ensure equitable access for welfare recipients to obtain higher education. Cynthia’s multimedia art, storytelling and film work has been exhibited and screened at several venues, including the Museum of the City of New York, Governors Island, Flux Factory and the Greek Consulate in NYC. She has lectured and published on inclusive archiving practices, student activism in higher education, housing justice, counter-narratives of historical exclusion in monument culture. Her latest bilingual documentary-in-progress, Mujeres Atrevidas, chronicles the strength of Latin American female app-delivery, domestic and construction workers as they fight for their rights. Proud to have begun her higher education journey at CUNY, Cynthia is a Hunter College alum who holds an MA in Politics from the New School, an MLS from Pratt Institute, and an EdD in Higher and Postsecondary Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Her dissertation focused on an oral history study and archive of the formation and impact of the student-led movement of Black Lives Matter in Higher Education.