About The Amplification Project

The Amplification Project is a participatory, community-led digital archive where art and stories of forced migration and refugeehood find sanctuary and amplification. Founded in 2019 by an international group of artists, curators, activists, and an archivist, we create space for voices that are too often silenced, distorted, or reduced to statistics.

What We Do

In a world where stories about refugees are usually told by others, we offer something different: a platform where artists and cultural producers can share their work on their own terms, in their own words. Our growing collection includes visual art, photography, illustrated narratives, videos, and blogs from contributors across the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and North America—each piece bearing witness to the complex realities of displacement, resilience, and survival. We believe art and cultural production are expressions of resistance to disappearance. Every work in the archive challenges erasure and testifies to experiences that might otherwise go unseen.

An Invitation to Contribute

Anyone creating work related to displacement and refugeehood is welcome here. Whether you're an artist with a refugee background sharing your own story, an ally bearing witness to displacement, or a cultural producer documenting these experiences, we invite you to contribute. You retain full rights to your work, have complete authority over how it's described and contextualized, and can decide how your story is told. We don't alter your submissions. We preserve your voice, your understanding, your perspective.

Our Mission

Our mission is to document, preserve, and raise the visibility of art and cultural production inspired, influenced, or affected by forced migration. We:

Offer archival sanctuary for artists who have experienced refugeehood and their allies—a secure space to preserve and share their work

Increase representation of refugee narratives in archives

Challenge xenophobic rhetoric and dehumanizing media portrayals through counter-narratives that humanize displaced people

Share diverse global perspectives on the myriad ways individuals and communities experience forced displacement

Foster connections and solidarity across boundaries and borders

How We Work

Our approach is rooted in reciprocity and community. When you contribute your work, we commit to amplifying it through our website, social media, and quarterly newsletter. We also seek to build ongoing relationships with contributors, staying in conversation about how the archive can best serve their needs. Through personal outreach and open submissions, we aim to build a network that spans geographical and cultural boundaries.

Why This Matters

Many archives predominantly hold records created about refugees, not by them. Mainstream media rarely gives refugees a voice in their own stories. Political rhetoric increasingly dehumanizes those seeking safety. Against this backdrop, The Amplification Project stands as an act of resistance and remembrance.We harness digital technology not only to preserve art and cultural production but also to challenge dominant narratives, create counter-stories, and build connections where people, art, archives, and activism converge. Each work represents resilience. Each story matters. We invite you to be part of this collective act of memory.

Our Team

Kathy Carbone

Co-founder, Director

Kathy Carbone is the director and archivist of The Amplification Project and assistant professor at the School of Information at Pratt Institute. Carbone’s research and practice sit at the nexus of contemporary art and archives, focusing on critical-creative-liberatory archival interventions, participatory cultural heritage, and utilizing archives as tactics and tools for acts of expressive resistance, community building, and social engagement. Her work has appeared in Archivaria, Archives and Records, Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, The International Journal of Human Rights, Curator: The Museum Journal, Archival Science, and the Journal of Documentation.

Habibah (Biba) Sheikh

Co-founder

Biba Sheikh is an author, curator, performer, producer, and director who has worked in refugee camps to create meaningful connections through written and performative arts and storytelling. Her current projects, “Mitli Mitlak (Like You, Like Me),” “Right To Live,” and Seed to Cedar, present situations of forced migration in the Mediterranean. Sheikh’s work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (USA), Born Global Foundation (ME), TransCultures Center for Sonic and Digital Arts (Brussels), and others.

Vukašin Nedeljković

Co-founder

Vukašin Nedeljković is an artist, activist, and independent scholar. They initiated the multidisciplinary platforms Asylum Archive and Fortress Europe: www.asylumarchive.com | www.fortresseu.com. In 2017, they were awarded an Arts and Activism bursary from the Arts Council/Create and published the book Asylum Archive. In 2021 Asylum Archive was featured in “The Narrow Gate of the Here - and - Now: Queer Embodiment” exhibition to mark 30 years of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. In 2021, Ronit Lentin and Nedeljković's Disavowing Asylum: Documenting Ireland’s Asylum Industrial Complex was published by Rowman & Littlefield.

Kate Rowland

Outreach Manager

Kate Rowland is a recent MLIS graduate from Pratt Institute, with research interests in critical information literacy and anarchival possibilities. As the Outreach Manager, Kate assists with managing the Amplification Project’s digital presence and community building initiatives.

Mariel Go

Digital Content and Systems Coordinator

Mariel Go is a current student in the MS in Information Experience Design program at Pratt Institute. While she has a background in software engineering and in building applications and websites, she also loves to create art and designs that capture human emotions and experiences. She aims to combine her two interests through her work, including through The Amplification Project.

Florinda Cano

Outreach Graduate Assistant

Florinda Cano is a student in the Masters of Library and Information Science program at Pratt Institute, a henna artist-artisan, and a writer with roots in the Yucatán peninsula. She is dedicated to the creation, preservation, and curation of archives and memory spaces; particularly ones devoted to the historical memory of women, women’s rituals and ceremonies, henna, and craft objects/processes. As The Amplification Project’s Outreach Graduate Assistant she primarily supports in tasks such as managing TAP’s social media presence and assisting in the publication of the newsletter.

With Gratitude

The Amplification Project owes its existence to the invaluable contributions of several community members, including one whose presence we deeply miss. Elizabeth (Lisa) Shoshany Anderson, who passed away in early 2024, played a pivotal role in shaping the early stages of our mission and vision. Her lasting impact is deeply appreciated, and we honor the foundation she helped establish. Her memory continues to inspire us.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Pinar Öğrenci, whose vision and contributions were crucial in the initial conceptualization and design of this initiative. Her efforts laid the groundwork for what The Amplification Project has become.

A special thank you goes to the UCLA graduate and undergraduate students, especially Nick Schwieterman, whose dedication and creativity were vital in developing our initial web presence. Your work brought our early digital vision to life.

We are equally grateful to Nimisha Malreddy, Navya Thakkar, and Nandita Malhotra — Pratt Institute School of Information graduate assistants and alumni volunteers — whose subsequent UX research, product management, and website (re)design work shaped and strengthened our visual identity and digital presence, while their community engagement helped us build lasting connections with both contributors and audiences.

‍We remain deeply grateful to everyone, named and unnamed, whose efforts helped and continue to help bring this archive to life.