Rate My Professor Jennifer Parker

Jennifer Parker is a professor of Art and Digital Art & New Media in the Arts Division at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she joined the Art Department faculty in 1999. She earned a B.A. in art from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1990 and an M.F.A. in Sculpture from Rutgers University in 1992. As founding Director of the OpenLab Collaborative Research Center since 2010, Parker leads interdisciplinary initiatives that integrate art, biology, technology, and ecology through multi-sensory collaborations with students, colleagues, and community partners. Her research spans Visual Arts, Social Practice, Environmental Art, BioArt, and Contemporary Art & Technology, emphasizing reciprocity, shared authorship, and boundary-crossing dialogues to foster environmental awareness and creative inquiry. Parker served as Art Department Chair from 2012 to 2017, principal faculty for the Digital Arts & New Media (DANM) MFA program from 2008 to 2018, and currently teaches in the Environmental Art and Social Practice MFA program. She contributes to the Center for Coastal Climate Resilience and the Center for Agroecology, exploring how ecosystems influence artistic practices, sensory interaction, agency, and collaboration within the experimental humanities.

Parker's artwork has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows at galleries and museums across the United States, Europe, and Asia. Notable publications include "The Algae Society BioArt Design Lab: Exploring multispecies entanglements and making kin with algae" (Leonardo, MIT Press, 2022), "Species Loss: Exploring Opportunities with Art–Science" (Integrative and Comparative Biology, 2018), "Science and Collectivism in Artistic Creation: Embracing Climate Change through Art" (The International Journal of the Arts in Society, 2020), "Making Sense of Sensors" (Digital Culture & Society, 2017), and "Slow FAST Forward: Enacting Digital Art and Civic Opportunities" (book chapter in Artistic Citizenship, 2016). She has received the CITRIS Innovation Award, Art Matters grant, NEA Artworks, American Psychoanalytic Foundation Award, Kate Neal Kinley Memorial Fellowship, New Forms Regional Grant from the NEA, New Jersey State Council of the Arts grants, SEED grants, Epsilon/Alliance Environmental Art and Education award, NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates, and UC Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives grants. Through projects like the Algae Society and Art+Fog, Parker advances climate resilience, public engagement, and transdisciplinary education.