Isabella Robbins

Isabella Shey Robbins a PhD student and Diné scholar in the History of Art Department at Yale University, where she studies global contemporary Indigenous art, with a focus on artists within settler states of the United States, Canada, and Australia. Her current research interests include rurality and mobility, (anti-)surveillance, materiality, the politics of refusal and opacity, and the extensions, intersections and overlappings of migration, diaspora and global Indigeneity. Guiding her research are questions of the limits of sovereignty and definitions of Indigeneity.

At Yale, Isabella is the graduate liaison for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America. In 2020 and 2021, she was a participant in the Newberry Library Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies Summer Institute. In addition, she proudly serves on the board of the Chapter House - Los Angeles, a Native arts space, and the Diné Studies Conference, Inc.

Isabella has a B.A. in Art History from Stanford University and an M.A. in Public Humanities from Brown University. While at Brown, she was the inaugural Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative fellow and curated Sacred is Sacred: the Art of Protecting Bears Ears, an exhibition of contemporary art pertaining to Bears Ears National Monument at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Previously, she has worked at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Cantor Arts Center, and in museum collections of Grand Canyon and Yosemite National Parks, as well as for the 24th Navajo Nation Council as a communications specialist. She has forthcoming reviews in First American Art Magazine.