Dr. Geneva Foster Gluck, a School of Art adjunct instructor and alumna, has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award along with six other University of Arizona faculty members for the 2026-27 academic year.
She will be based in Spain’s Catalonia region from September to May to develop a creative research project that combines energy humanities with applied art, theater and scenography as tools for promoting behavioral change related to climate change.
As part of the Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Award, she’ll work with environmental scientist Maria Heras at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Barcelona on a series of immersive art and educational encounters that coalesce research questions and findings unique to Spain’s progressive energy, as well as the entangled legacies of colonialism, energy systems and cultural transformation.
“This was my first (Fulbright) application … and I really look forward to working with Maria and with all the great energy and sustainability projects that are taking place in Spain,” Foster Gluck said. “By taking an interdisciplinary approach to energy humanities, theater and design, my research contributes insights into our daily interactions with energy, diversifies perceptions of energy and devises actions for generative possibilities on a warming planet in the form of public-facing, immersive and interactive experiences.”
She has explored similar environmental themes specific to Tucson and the borderlands in projects such as her site-specific performance “Inheriting the Void” (2026), at the base of Tumamoc Hill, and “Interactive Batteries” (2024) in the “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” exhibition at the school’s Joseph Gross Gallery.
U of A has long Fulbright history
The Fulbright Program is the U.S. State Department’s flagship cultural exchange program that supports U.S. scholars conducting research or teaching abroad for up to a year. Since 1954, more than 300 Fulbright Scholars have represented the University of Arizona at institutions around the world.
Since 2024, Foster Gluck has taught “Career Development for Artists” at the School of Art, where she received her BFA in 1999.
“I really enjoy teaching … and find it very satisfying to think about how to have sustainable arts practices, while expanding creative culture, such as art-as-research and community engagement,” she said. “Each semester is very different as each cohort of students brings new questions and perspectives on making a living as an artist.”
During her time in Spain, Foster Gluck will continue to teach her career development class online.
“I look forward to sharing some of what I learn about how Spain supports artists, its creative culture and economies,” she said. “The online format will also give me more time to work one-on-one with students and to support their unique visions and aims.”
Immersive theater, circus skills part of BFA years
During her undergraduate time at U of A, Gluck became a core member of Tucson-based Flam Chen Pyrotechnic Theatre, where she was responsible for introducing aerial circus skills and interactive sculpture into the company’s performance repertoire. Flam Chen performed at New York City and Philadelphia Fringe Festivals in 2001 and 2002.
After Gluck earned her M.A. in Scenography at the University of London in 2003, she went on to work with some of the UK’s most successful contemporary and immersive theater companies, including Fevered Sleep (2003), Marisa Carnesky (2004), and SHUNT (2005), before establishing her own company, Sugar Beast Circus, in 2007. The circus received professional acclaim, including the Jeunes Talents Cirque Award (2008), a residency at The Roadhouse (2010), a Circus Futures award (2011) and a premiere at the prestigious London International Mime Festival (2012).
“My work centers on immersive event-production, creative research, and material storytelling to explore a range of topics and experiences often grounded in decolonizing, feminist, and ecological approaches,” Gluck said. “I use a range of creative practices including performance, prop-making, video and sound installation to explore the connections between ways of knowing, environment and embodied experience.”
In 2020, Gluck completed a practice-led PhD program at Arizona State University titled, “Performing the Electrical or My Heart is an Electromagnetic Chamber: Scenographies of Power, Ecology and Speculative Practice.” Her research integrated performance studies, spatial theory and energy humanities to consider the ways that new knowledge is created and shared through artist led projects.
Now based in Tucson, Gluck is co-founder of Snakebite Creation Space, a platform for supporting performance, installation and process-based work in Southern Arizona and Northern Mexico. Her other shows included “Magnetic Chamber” (2022) at Pidgin Palace Arts, and “Battery Maker Museum” (2020), a month-long installation and nomadic storytelling project at the MSA Annex in west downtown.
Tumamoc project involves community
In early April, Gluck presented “Inheriting the Void,” a performance-installation and video essay, at the base of Tumamoc Hill. Loosely based on Gluck’s experience caring for her mother during her rapid onset of dementia, as well as larger themes of the climate crisis and mental health, the performance invited community members to scan a QR code on their phones for a 15-minute audiovisual story, using headphones.
She invited visitors to witness a speculative interaction between a bear and a ventriloquist that asks: “On whose behalf do we speak? What is the relationship between memory and knowledge? And who or what speaks through our actions?”
“I thought it was going to be much more of a traditional performance, but I was really pleased with the way the ‘narrative’ divided across the live installation, the site and the video essays,” she said. “I have used phone technologies before for site-specific and nomadic storytelling, but this was a little different, and the ways that the audience engaged with the work was really fun to see.”
The event was made possible by a MOCA Tucson Night Bloom Award and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
- Artist’s website: www.genevafostergluck.com
- Instagram: @genevagluck
- Story about Maria Heras: “Art can help us reconnect with ourselves, with the environment, with otherness”
Internal support is available for prospective Fulbright Scholar and Specialist applicants. For more information, contact Danielle Barefoot, dbarefoot@arizona.edu, associate for International Research Development and the university’s Fulbright Scholar liaison.
