- Visiting Scholar
- Email: DNeumark@clarku.edu
Advancing climate justice and community resilience by centering beauty in the built environment.
Devora Neumark, PhD, is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, community-engaged practitioner, educator, scholar, and policy analyst whose work focuses on beauty in the built environment within displacement contexts. Recently relocated to Ottawa after seven transformative years in Iqaluit, Nunavut in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, Neumark brings over 30 years of experience spanning academia, policy work, and creative engagement, grounded in contemplative practice.
Their PhD research-creation, titled Radical Beauty for Troubled Times: Involuntary Displacement and the (Un)Making of Home, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, explored this intersection further, examining how trauma from forced displacement intersects with aesthetics in the built environment and the intentional beautification of home.
From October through December 2024, Neumark was a Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights Erlangen-Nürnberg, where they explored aesthetic dimensions of refugee housing in Germany. They are also a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Sustainability & Social Justice at Clark University.
Neumark was certified as a Climate Change Adaptation Practitioner by the Yale School of Public Health in 2020. They received a Graduate Diploma in Public Safety/Emergency Management from Wilfrid Laurier University in 2025.
Between 2003 and 2021, Neumark served as a faculty member at the Goddard College MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts program, where they co-founded the Indigenous and Decolonial Art Concentration in Port Townsend, WA. Since 2018, as a Canadian federal employee, Neumark has worked as an Economic Development Officer and Senior Strategic Policy Analyst with the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and as a Senior Analyst/Researcher with the Department of Justice Canada’s Indigenous Rights and Relations Portfolio (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act Implementation Secretariat).
In collaboration with Stephanie Acker, MPA, Neumark has published a related series of working papers and policy briefs:
– Reimagining Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: the role of aesthetics in shelter and settlements response (Policy brief), 2024
– Rethinking Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: the role of aesthetics in refugee shelter (Working paper), 2024
– Beauty in the built environment and refugee self-reliance (Policy brief), 2023
Initiated by Dr. Devora Neumark and Stephanie Acker, Home Ground Lab was a creative research and storytelling initiative housed within Clark University’s Integration and Belonging Hub. The Lab focused on the intersection of aesthetics, justice, and the built environment, exploring how beauty functions as a vital form of infrastructure in spaces often overlooked by traditional design and policy systems: refugee shelter, transitional housing, and communities shaped by displacement or marginalization
Relevant Works:
- Acker, S. & Neumark, D. (2023, November 25). In the face of death, destruction and displacement, beauty plays a vital role in Gaza. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/in-the-face-of-death-destruction-and-displacement-beauty-plays-a-vital-role-in-gaza-216982
- Neumark, D. (2015). Dialogic performance and the shaping of physical and psychosocial urban geographies. In O. Lazzaroti, G. Mercier, & S. Paquet (Eds.), Géographie et cultures (pp. 91–110). Paris: L’Harmattan. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cpfCO-LEeCUPHbIXkoq3NJAVLovAeHth/view?usp=drive_link
- Neumark, D. (2015). Co-activating beauty, co-narrating home: Dialogic live art performance and the practice of inclusiveness. In D. Conrad & A. Sinner (Eds.), Creating together: Participatory, community-based, and collaborative arts practices and scholarship across Canada (pp. 111–129). Wilfrid Laurier University Press. https://doi.org/10.51644/9781771120241-010
- Neumark, D. (2013). Drawn to beauty: The practice of house‑beautification as homemaking amongst the forcibly displaced. Housing, Theory and Society, 30(3), 237–261. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SrLOWSBRoOqXUQwTw6e_6Vq5SlyLK7rS/view?usp=drive_link
- Neumark, D. (2010). Performing aesthetics, performing politics: ‘The Jewish Home Beautiful’ and the re‑shaping of the Jewish exile narrative. Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 1(1), 37–51. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jVZeYlQ5qSNmIvKo_wZRNWVMd5TKVJ0i/view?usp=drive_link
- Neumark, D. (2018). How at home are we really? Art, diversity & dwelling in Canada’s multicultural landscape. In T. Willard (Ed.), Access all areas: Conversations on engaged art (pp. 31–48). Grunt Gallery. https://artofengagement.gruntarchives.org/essay-devora-neumark-how-at-home-are-we-really.html
- Neumark, D. (2007). Home is where the walls speak in familiar ways: Listening to the demands of ethics and witness in community performance. In P. Kuppers & G. Robertson (Eds.), The community performance reader (pp. 142–148). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003060635/community-performance-reader-petra-kuppers-gwen-robertson
- Devora Neumark – Home Beautiful: https://devoraneumark.com
- Matralab: https://matralab.hexagram.ca/tamuke/home/