Jessica Baran’s research has focused on modern and contemporary art and material culture that engages with the public sphere. She is especially interested in situating visual art within a place-based context, and how that context interacts with local historic legacies and socio-political and environmental dynamics that contribute to the construction of racial and gendered identities. Her research often centers artists who use artistic interventions as a means of unsettling structural inequities, as well as art institutions and cultural policies that have attempted to address similar concerns. Prior to and alongside her work at the university, she has explored these interests in public-facing forms such as art criticism, curatorial projects and creative writing.