Maya Malik (they/them), MSSW, is an incoming doctoral student in the Curriculum and Instruction program at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Maya is interested in utilizing arts-based research to co-create informal education programs with queer Black American youth from areas impacted by community violence. They earned their Masters of Science in Social Work from the Columbia School of Social Work, focusing on International Social Welfare and Rights for Immigrants and Refugees (within education).
Maya was also a 2022-2023 Sadler Scholar at the Hastings Center for their work on the intersection of health and reparations interventions, and a 2023-2024 Participatory Action Fellow with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC).
During their first year, Maya was involved in Drawbridge with Lynda Barry, completed a Whoopensocker Apprenticeship in a Madison area elementary school, was involved in workshopping and performing in a stage reading of a new work at African Students Association at the African Studies Program (ASP) Graduate Working Group Symposium, and became Research Affiliate of the SoulFolk Collective. Mx. Malik was also a member of a Forum Theater group that has performed conflicts from Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” for students and school staff all over the Madison Metropolitan area.
Publications
Myriam Denov, Sopheap Suong, Lori Ralko, and Maya Malik. “There were always people watching us”: Experiences and perspectives on forced marriage, control & surveillance among Cambodian genocide survivors and former Khmer Rouge officials.” Journal of Genocide Research. doi: 10.1080/14623528.2026.2644831.
Frankfurter, R., Malik, M., Kpakiwa, S. D., McGinnis, T., Malik, M. M., Chitre, S., Barrie, M. B., Dibba, Y., Mulalu, L., Baldwinson, R., Fallah, M., Rashid, I., Kelly, J. D., & Richardson, E. T. (2024). Representations of an Ebola ‘outbreak’ through story technologies. BMJ Global Health, 9(2), e013210. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2023-013210
Malik, M., & Malik, M. M. (2021). Critical technical awakenings. Journal of Social Computing, 2(4), 365–384. https://doi.org/10.23919/JSC.2021.0035
Cortesi, S., Hasse, A., Eigen, M., Toscano, P. M., Malik, M., & Gasser, U. (2021, October 28). Youth and extended reality: An initial exploration of augmented, virtual, and mixed realities. Youth and Media, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37369907
Gyan, G., Malik, M., & Siddique, A. (2021). Barriers to women’s participation in community development processes in rural Ghana: A regression analysis. Development in Practice, 32(4): 448–459. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2021.1937541
Richardson, E. T., Malik, M. M., Darity, W. W., Jr., Mullen, A. K., Morse, M. E., Malik, M., Maybank, A., Bassett, M. T., Farmer, P. E., Worden, L., & Jones, J. H. (2021). Reparations for Black American descendants of persons enslaved in the US and their potential impact on SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Social Science & Medicine, 276, 113741. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113741
Presentations /Exhibitions
(2026, June 15-19) Presented an artistic piece at the annual meeting of International Society of the Learning Sciences International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS).
(2026, June 18-20) Presented a poster at the International Society for Arts and Medicine (ISfAM) Healing Arts Congress.
(2025, August). Using the pillars of Black Internationalization in international service-learning to create stories of home and belonging. 2025 IARSLCE Conference. International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement. Durban, South Africa, August 13-15, 2025.
(2025, April 5). Round table session – Teaching community-engaged research methods: Challenges, strategies, and reflections. 2025 URBAN Conference – Traveling Together: The Many Paths of Community Engaged Research. Urban Research-Based Action Network (URBAN). Brown University, Providence, RI, April 3-6, 2025.
(2024 November 8-10)The arts as knowledge construction in community engaged scholarship. 7th Community-Based Global Learning Summit. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA.
(2022, May 21). Place-based understandings of power, Black geographies and ethical critiques of colonial uses of space: Rethinking procedural ethics with war-affected youth. With Neil Bilotta and Rosemary R. Carlton. 18th International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (QI2022). Virtual, May 18-22, 2022.
(2021, January 20). Methods and critical issues training: Critical theory and quantification. With Ezekiel Dixon-Román and Momin M. Malik. Histories of Artificial Intelligence: A Genealogy of Power. Mellon Sawyer Seminar, University of Cambridge. https://www.ai.hps.cam.ac.uk/activities/methods-and-critical-issues-training/methods-and-critical-issues-training-critical-theory
Activities/Service
Member 0f Graduate Student Network (GradSN) of the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE), and a Knowledge Mobilization action team member of the Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative (CGBL).
Reviewer for Play, Make, Learn 2026.
Reviewer for International Journal of Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement. (IJRSLCE)
Reviewer for International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE) 2026 Conference.
School government – interim of the Student Misconduct Panel – member of the LGBTQ+ Committee.
Podcast guest – Episode 4: guest Maya Malik and the arts as their own way of knowing. https://youtu.be/0QqdVlO3fIw?si=ZHJc9cOnKhrSuIIw.
Visiting researcher at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg University w/ Dr. Relebohile Moletsane, FALF-Wits-NRF Research Chair in Gender-based Violence & Femicide AND UNESCO UniTwin Co-Chair in Mental Health and Psychological Support for Teachers and Learners.