Sam Brakarsh

Sam Brakarsh is a social systems consultant and facilitator from Zimbabwe, currently living in Princeton, NJ. He is the Africa Regional Representative for PEN America and co-founded the Chikukwa Research Trust (CRT), which focuses on mindfulness-based trauma healing, regenerative agriculture, and social theatre across twelve villages in Zimbabwe. Sam is a Theatre of The Oppressed practitioner, having established a ToTO network in Zimbabwe as well as conducting trainings across Ghana, Kenya, the United States, the Philippines, and occupied Palestine. His research includes health systems strengthening in Sub-Saharan Africa; humanitarian funding models; and the function of social art as a tool for collective mobilization, dialogue, and participatory research. Sam is on the Mind and Life Institute Young Adult Advisory Council and is a 2019 Dalai Lama Fellow. He holds a BA in Social Psychology and Global Health from Yale University and an MSc in African Studies from Oxford University.

Cooking for people.

Although there are many people I love and am inspired by, this question makes me think about my relationships to place. I am most influenced by the places where I navigate belonging.

Theatre of The Oppressed, Augusto Boal

Kintu, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Incompleteness: Frontier Africa and the Currency of Conviviality, Francis Nyamnjoh