Sassafras Initiative is a collective of independent researchers, writers, artists, and creatives seeking to engage with new forms of knowledge production. We are critical of the exclusionary parameters in which ‘legitimate’ academic knowledge is produced and disseminated, since this is often inaccessible to the cultures, stories and people being spoken about. We aim to go beyond paywalls, expensive monographs, and gated lecture halls to bridge the gap between visual arts, oral histories, labour and traditional research. Through a series of publications and projects, we intend to unite interdisciplinary research and radical experimentation of form to make knowledge production both accessible and playful. As such, our work places the essay alongside the poem, the performance, the illustration, the home video, the recipe, and the craft as equally valid sources of knowledge. We envision Sassafras growing into a community that transcends physical and disciplinary borders, enabling these knowledges to speak to each other in fluid ways.
Our Team
Anjana is a recent graduate and researcher keen on exploring the intersections of media, culture and politics through a critical lens. Her recent academic work involves examining regional belonging and politics in India through cinema. As a co-founder of the Sassafras Initiative, she leads and contributes to the Content Management and Editing team, drawing on her previous experience in journalism. Through the Sassafras Initiative, she aims to engage with areas overlooked by traditional academia and to bring forth meaningful and informed public discourse.
Anna Phaidra is an award-winning artist and researcher specializing in illustration, woodcarving, installation, and visual design. Their personal work attends to living, extinct, and speculative beings through an interdisciplinary lens—bringing together historical symbolism and folklore with environmental humanities research. They hold a BA and BFA at Leiden University and the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague respectively, and are currently completing their MA project on geological worlding and unworlding at Humboldt University. They are one of the co-founders of Sassafras.
Barra MacMahon is a web developer and musician hailing from the west of Ireland. He studied Contemporary Modern Music with a focus on vocal performance at BIMM Dublin before moving to Berlin and learning to code at 42 Berlin. In his spare time he plays guitar with Ruth Mac and enjoys tinkering with audio tech. His work blends his love for playful sound design and gritty guitar shoegaze music.
Chenlu Ni is a researcher, filmmaker, and interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin. With a background in sociology and a strong interest in technology, culture, and political economy, their work explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, algorithmic governance, attention, desire, and global inequalities. Drawing from critical theory, postcolonial studies, Chenlu combines academic research with filmmaking, photography, music and other media.
Diana is a student and researcher whose interests include analyzing the intersections of media, culture industries, identity formation, statecraft, and affective politics. She holds degrees in economics, political science, and psychology, and she is currently finishing her Master's in Global Studies. Her professional experiences have involved working across editorial, educational, and think tank settings. At present, she is completing a research project on political humor in the age of the attention economy and rising authoritarianism.
Gabrielle is fascinated by the things that survive empire: laws, institutions, stories, superstitions, and people. Raised in Trinidad and Tobago, her work explores the productive tensions between colonial institutions, legal frameworks, and governance structures on the one hand, and the everyday sociocultural practices through which people create meaning, belonging, and community on the other. Drawing on literature, oral traditions, folklore, and superstitious practices as archives of knowledge, Gabrielle brings these sources into conversation with scholarship on migration, citizenship, and land governance. Professionally, she has worked in the public sector, law, and international development, experiences that continue to inform her interest in the relationship between institutions, power, and everyday life. Gabrielle is Co-founder of Sassafras Initiative and leads Social Media, Branding and Promotion, a role that complements her broader interest in how ideas, identities, and forms of knowledge are communicated, negotiated, and reproduced across different social worlds.
Javiera is a history and social sciences researcher whose work explores themes of home, homemaking, migration, and belonging, tracing the emotional, spatial, and material dimensions of everyday life across borders. She holds a BA in History and is currently completing an MA in Global Studies, with a focus on homemaking among Latin migrant women's communities in Germany. Outside academia, she uses illustration as a means of exploring stories and experiences that often escape written language. She is one of the co-founders of Sassafras.
Malin works at the intersection of decolonial and intersectional feminist thought, with particular interest in sexual and reproductive health and rights. She holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Groningen and an MA in Global Studies from Humboldt University of Berlin, and has worked across NGOs and international organizations, including UNAIDS, on human rights and sexual and reproductive health. She also carries a strong regional interest in Latin America, having studied and worked in Colombia, Argentina, and Guatemala. Professionally, she works on public sector projects, particularly in climate while integrating feminist and intersectional perspectives into that work. Creatively, she is into all things textile, drawn to handicraft and textile art as sociological objects and to the forms of female community that build up around them. She joined Sassafras to channel her constant analyzing of the world into something more productive.