My research analyzes art, design, and material culture as the building blocks of trans-historical and global narratives that reflect on contemporary concerns. I do this in my writing as a historian and as a curator in projects across multiple platforms (exhibitions, publications, social media, lectures, events). I currently focus on two areas that I feel directly target urgent political, social, and cultural issues: sustainability, green design, and environmental history; and Latin American, especially Afro-Brazilian, material culture. My work on sustainability has spanned my career, from my start at MoMA where I curated Digitally Mastered (2006-7), the first museum exhibition to showcase cutting-edge digital design and production technologies, including the earliest commercially available 3D-printed and CAD/CAM objects, as harbingers of material innovation, waste reduction, and improved efficiency in mass production, customization, and consumption. In my work with the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), sustainability takes on an added dimension of social justice and equality/equity in imbalanced global markets. I have been researching indigenous and marginalized communities that work local materials using highly-developed, unique techniques that, due to a number of factors, risk extinction. At BGC, I will introduce a course on material cultures of transatlantic West Africa.