Jolene Rickard is an Associate Professor at Cornell University in the departments of History of Art and Art, and the former Director of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program 2008-2020 (AIISP). She is a visual historian, artist and curator interested in the intersection of Indigenous art, cultural theory and the forces of settler colonialism. Her research centers on the expression of multiple sovereignties within Indigenous art and culture globally.
Jolene Rickard has been at the forefront of comparative understandings of global Indigenous art with research projects in the Americas, Australia, and Aotearoa (New Zealand). Her work bridges the fields of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Settler Colonial Studies and the discipline of Art History. Focused on the complication of sovereignty as a political, theoretical and activist action, Rickard investigates anti-colonial artistic strategies, place-based knowledges and ontologies.