About

Professor Alex Ungprateeb Flynn is an Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Graduate Affairs in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. His research brings the arts and social sciences into dialogue, combining critical theory with sustained engagement in aesthetic practice. Working with activists, curators, and artists, he investigates how art in community contexts can generate new forms of knowledge, propose alternatives to the utopian, and open up critical perspectives on temporality. His work is framed by a collaborative methodological approach, exploring how human beings express themselves artistically and seek to transform the world. Flynn's scholarship includes ethnographic engagement with social movements, notably the Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil, which is the focus of his recent book, 'Pathways to Utopia: Time and Transformation in the Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil' (Indiana University Press, 2025). He has worked extensively in Brazil since 2007 and has also engaged in projects in Mexico, Argentina, and Thailand. His work increasingly focuses on the intersection of ethnographic and curatorial modes of inquiry, resulting in exhibitions such as Concrete Mirror in Paris, Cartoneras: Releituras Latino-americanas in São Paulo, and Construction, Occupation at the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. Flynn has received recognition for his curatorial work, including the São Paulo Association of Art Critics 2017 APCA Trophy. His scholarship has been supported by funding from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the Economic and Social Research Council. He is affiliated with the Center for Brazilian Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UCLA and is an affiliated member of the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Politique at EHESS in Paris. His expertise encompasses contemporary art, curatorial practice, ethnography, activism, social movements, temporality, utopias, and alternative modernisms, with a geographic focus on Brazil and Thailand.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Anatomy
• Pedagogy
• Medicine
• Philosophy
• Radiology
• Epistemology
• Biology
• Geography
• Anthropology
• Internal medicine
• Law

Selected publications

• Struggling with Citational Politics as a Pathway to Unlearning and Relearning for Collective Action

  KULA knowledge creation dissemination and preservation studies · 2026-01-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  There is a growing movement committed to the values of equitable and just citation, but the material practices of altering citational politics are more challenging. For instance, researchers in the Global South are under-cited, but how many citations are enough to correct this bias? How do we best determine when an author is from the Global South to begin with? We present a case study where social and natural science researchers (the authors) spent years engaged in the material practices of citational politics at the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR). Our findings show that there were notable changes at the individual and collective levels as participants tried to change the status quo, and we use Gloria Anzaldúa’s pathway to conocimiento as an organizing framework for explaining the process of unlearning and learning that occurs through engaging with citational politics. The pathway moves through seven non-linear stages on the way to conocimiento: (1) arrebato/the rupture, when the reality of citational politics is fully understood; (2) liminal space, characterized by more questions than answers; (3) a retreat to pre-rupture/arrebato politics in the face of difficult ideas (backsliding); (4) the crossing, a step in ethical learning that moves the learner from thinking to action; (5) creating new stories where new individual and collective norms emerge; (6) the clash, a stage where these new norms clash against the status quo again; (7) and finally chores, the mundane, regular practices that maintain an amended status quo. Our analysis of the process is designed to both support citational politics practices in particular and provide a framework with examples of how to facilitate and anticipate changes in engaged, collective social change work in general.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• 857: Lung ventilation assessment using 4DCT scans before and after radiotherapy

  Radiotherapy and Oncology · 2024-05-01

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• Pathways to Utopia

  Indiana University Press eBooks · 2024-10-01

  book1st authorCorresponding

  9781501771248, 9781978825659, 9781501770432

  PublisherDOI

• Forty Years of the Landless Workers Movement

  2024-11-13

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Tomando forma, creando mundos: las editoriales cartoneras en America Latina

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  bookOpen access

  Un fenómeno editorial y un proyecto artístico, la edición cartonera nació con la crisis económica argentina de 2001. Impulsada por un espíritu rebelde, las cartoneras se han multiplicado, con cientos de colectivos en América Latina y Europa que hacen libros coloridos de bajo costo, con portadas de cartón recolectado de la calle. Basado en una investigación interdisciplinaria realizada en México, Brasil y Argentina, el libro Tomando forma, creando mundos: las editoriales cartoneras en América Latina explora las múltiples formas por las cuales se ha fomentado una red de escritores, artistas y lectores comprometidos. Más que un movimiento social, las editoriales cartoneras usan sus libros, talleres, encuentros y exposiciones para apoyar y activar a sus comunidades a través de formas abiertas que reúnen elementos artísticos y sociales. Para varios grupos, como cooperativas cartoneras, comunidades indígenas, niños en zonas rurales y mujeres encarceladas, las cartoneras ofrecen un medio único para contar historias y generar colaboraciones que hacen caer los muros de la "ciudad letrada". Frente a la estigmatización y exclusión, los colectivos cartoneros dan forma a una estética decolonial basada en la resistencia, creando espacios de experimentación creativa en los cuales toman forma mundos plurales. Este libro, en su edición original en inglés, recibió el premio: 2023 LASA Visual Culture Studies Section Book Prize, Latin American Studies Association (LASA).

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Teorizando a dobradiça cartonera: pesquisa trans-formal para uma prática transformadora

  Caracol · 2023-10-09

  articleOpen access

  This is a translation of the chapter “Methods: Trans-Formal Research for Transformational Practice”, part of the book Taking Form, Making Worlds: Cartonera Publishers in Latin America (2022). Throughout the article, the authors follow the activities of the Mexican cartoneras La Rueda Cartonera and Viento Cartonero to elaborate a theory of cartonera practice and, at the same time, to offer a reflection on the methodology they have developed to work on and with cartonera, based on an interdisciplinary vision. In this process, Bell, Flynn and O’Hare propose the concept of the “double fold” to name a double path of this type of social and artistic project: the presence of the sociopolitical structures in cartonera practices and, in turn, the impact of cartoneras in sociopolitical practices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• CHAPTER 6 Exhibitions: An Artistic Proposition to Reorder the Social

  University of Texas Press eBooks · 2022-06-02

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• Illustrations

  University of Texas Press eBooks · 2022-06-02

  book-chapterOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Frontmatter

  University of Texas Press eBooks · 2022-06-02

  book-chapterOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• CHAPTER 5 Workshops: Cardboard and the Material Sociality of Practice

  University of Texas Press eBooks · 2022-06-02

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Frequent coauthors

• Lucy Bell

  33 shared

• Patrick O’Hare

  University of St Andrews

  32 shared

• Jonas Tinius

  14 shared

• Ruy Llera Blanes

  Centre for Research in Anthropology

  9 shared

• Maïté Maskens

  9 shared

• Philip Lowe

  3 shared

• Emma Page

  2 shared

• Christopher Oldfield

  Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust

  1 shared

Labs

• Dancing Disability LabPI

Education

• PhD in Social Anthropology, Anthropology

  University of Manchester

  2010

• BA Hons, English

  University of Oxford

  2001

Awards & honors

• São Paulo Association of Art Critics 2017 APCA Trophy