Robert Sember (born 1963 in Durban, South Africa) works at the intersection of art and public health. He is a member of the international sound-art collective, Ultrared, which helped establish Vogue’ology, an initiative by and for members of the AfricanAmerican and Latino/a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in New York City. His ethnographic research in the U.S. and South Africa has focused on governmental and non-governmental substance abuse, mental health, and homelessness service sectors with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS prevention, testing, and treatment access. He is a Senior Associate with the Center for Social Innovation where he has led initiatives on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on addiction and mental health recovery. He is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts at The New School’s Eugene Lang College, and has taught at UCLA, University of Ohio, The Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, and the Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture, and Society at the University of Amsterdam’s Graduate School of Social Sciences. Sember was a 2009-2011 fellow at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics.

Please access Robert’s interview via the cassette tape or transcript in the gallery, or by scheduling an appointment with The New School Archives and Special Collections.