About Lyra
Dr. Lyra D. Monteiro (she/zie) is a scholar, artist, and organizer whose work focuses on the uses of the past in public culture. Her interdisciplinary training includes a BA in Classics and Anthropology (NYU); MAs in Latin and in Classical Art & Archaeology (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor); and an MA in Public Humanities from the American Studies department at Brown University, where she also earned her PhD from the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World. Dr. Monteiro directs The Museum On Site, a public arts/public humanities project, and is Co-Convener of Finding Ceremony, a descendant-led process for the return of ancestral remains, with West Philadelphia writer and organizer aAliy Muhammad. She is writing two books: UnCollect Our Ancestors, about Finding Ceremony’s work for the repatriation of ancestors held by museums; and Liberation Archaeology, which offers people of color in the US a liberatory way to engage with our pasts.