Working at the intersection of the social sciences, geography, and the documentary arts, Amy Blondell originally trained in urban visual anthropology at New School for Social Research in New York. After completing postdoctoral work in public health, she joined the research faculty at UCSF where she was a PI on an NIH-funded study utilizing mobile technologies to collaborate, over a two-year period, with migrating homeless youth documenting healthcare, housing, transportation, labor, and income-generating activities. Together they created and exhibited travelogues combining annotated migration maps with photos, photo-essays, and geo-narratives.
Exploring the environments and urban social spaces that enable queer communities to survive, flourish, and create social change, Blondell has undertaken action research and social history projects focusing on the relationship between urban kinship, community, and political action. Social history projects include: the campaigns of homeless and marginally housed LGBT2QQ youth to create transitional shelter in San Francisco; the anti-racist and feminist political work of Black and White Men Together and Men of All Colors Together, New York; and feminist kinship and political mobilization in San Francisco’s Valencia Corridor, 1990-2010.
Amy Blondell currently resides in the Monterey Bay Area, with her wife Andrea and their six-year-old, Jamie.