Marisa Angell Brown is associate director of the Center for Complexity at RISD. She is an art historian, educator and curator whose work focuses on the intersections between art, design and community, with a special interest in preservation, social practice art and participatory design. Her writing has appeared in Places Journal, Perspecta, Manual, Buildings and Landscapes and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and her curatorial projects have been featured in Metropolis and Architectural Record.

Before joining the CfC, Brown was an assistant director at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University, where she taught courses in preservation and the public humanities and directed community partnerships, public programs and many research initiatives. She serves on the executive committee of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies and on the state review board for the Rhode Island State Historic Preservation Office. Brown earned her PhD in the history of art and architecture from Yale University; she has an MA from the University of Chicago and a BA from Princeton University.