María do Mar Castro Varela, born in 1964 in A Coruña/Spain, studied psychology and pedagogy at the University of Cologne and earned her doctorate in political science at the Justus Liebig University Giessen. She is a professor of general education and social work with a focus on gender and queer at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Science in Berlin. Her research focus on social justice, digital hate and conspiracy theories, and issues of emancipation.

Publications
2023 | Double Bind postkolonial. Kritische Perspektiven auf Kunst und Kulturelle Bildung. transcript. (co-editor)
2021 | Postpandemisches Leben. Eine neue Theorie der Fragilität. transcript. (co-author).
2021 | Tertium Comparationis. Sonderheft “Postkoloniale Perspektiven auf Erziehungs- und Bildungswissenschaften“. Waxmann.
2020 | Postkoloniale Theorie: Eine kritische Einführung. transcript (co-author, 3. edition, UTB)
2020 | Doing Tolerance: Democracy, Citizenship and Social Protests, Barbara Budrich & Columbia University Press. (co-editor)
2007 | Unzeitgemäße Utopien. Migrantinnen zwischen Selbsterfindung und Gelehrter Hoffnung. transcript.

Awards
2021 | Honorary Membership of the Sir Peter Ustinov Institute Vienna
2020 | Sir Peter Ustinov Visiting Professorship, University of Vienna, Institute of Contemporary History
2007 | Citizen Ambassador of the Free Rohingya Coalition
2017 | CouLe Awardee. Award for Courageous Lesbians - LAG NRW
2016 | Senior Fellowship Institute for the Science of Man (IWM), Vienna
2008 | Elected Member of the German Commission for UNESCO (DUK) (4 years)

Project description
Dealing with Disappointment: Aesthetic Enlightenment and the Art of Decolonization.
In times of multiple crises, it is imperative to (re)examine the mandate of art. What role can or should art play in the face of increasing social injustices? Can critical artistic practices facilitate transnational justice and democracy and protect and promote human rights? Or should art be inappropriate? Given that art functions within capitalist structures and coloniality, the role of artist:s and art institutions is ambivalent. To find answers to this pressing question, María do Mar Castro Varela and Nikita Dhawan, on the one hand, look at artivism, whose origins lie in the social movements of the 1970s and 1980s in Los Angeles and Berlin. They also explore whether and how aesthetic education can help us imagine a planetary future.