Jigna Desai is Professor in the Department of Feminist Studies and the Department of Asian American Studies at University of California — Santa Barbara. For the last 25 years, she has been dedicated to building the field of Feminist Studies through research, teaching, collaboration, engagement, cultivating spaces of sustenance and hope. They are the author and co-editor of numerous books and essays and continue to write extensively on issues of disability, race, gender, media, and sexuality as well as the potential of the university as a site for social justice. Desai sees as feminist centers as tools for speculating just futures.

Kimberly Soriano is a Queer Oaxacan and first-generation scholar who engages in community-based research that focuses on the issues of gentrification, criminalization, harm reduction, cultural production, and displacement. As a community member of Los Angeles’ Echo Park, Soriano has for the past ten years documented and organized gang injunctions, encampment sweeps, and other forms of spatial policing in Los Angeles. Their research and teaching strive to hold conversations with undergraduate, and graduate students as well as colleagues at university and surrounding communities on collaborative justice-oriented alternatives that move us against binaries and toward safety for everyone.