Omi Osun Joni L. Jones is an artist/scholar whose work focuses on performance ethnography\, theatrical jazz\, Yoruba-based aesthetics\, Black Feminisms and activist theatre. Her performances include sista docta—a critique of the academy\, and Searching for Osun—a performance ethnography around Yoruba-based spirituality and identity. She has conducted theatre for social change workshops for the Forum on Governance and Democracy in Ile-Ife\, Nigeria\, for Educafro in Sao Paulo\, Brazil\, and for the Austin Project which she founded as a collaboration of women of color artists\, scholars\, activists and allies who use art for re-imagining society. The work of the Austin Project is documented in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art\, Activism\, Academia and the Austin Project\, co-edited by Jones\, Sharon Bridgforth and Lisa Moore (University of Texas Press\, 2010). Jones’s scholarship can be found in TDR\, TPQ\, Theatre Journal and Theatre Topics. She is a member of the Urban Futures Network Think Tank and the Body Politic Think Tank at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco\, and has begun a series of improvised explorations with 3 Jazz Collective in Austin\, Texas. Her collaborative ethnography\, Theatrical Jazz: Performance\, Ase\, and the Power of the Present Moment\, is now available through the Ohio State University Press.
sista docta is a personal\, participatory exploration of the academic life of a Black queer woman professor at predominantly white institutions.