Maia Nichols holds a PhD in art history criticism and theory from the University of California San Diego specializing in 20th century French and North African visual and material culture and postcolonial theory. Her dissertation researched in France with support from a four-year Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship engages art historical visual and material culture methods and archival evidence to consider the institutional history of French colonial North Africa’s progression to independence during the social psychiatry movement. She holds degrees in psychology and visual art from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and a masters in Aesthetics and Politics from the California Institute of the Arts. She engages in art practice and has taught studio art drawing at UC San Diego and has taught Media Studies at Bennington College. Her work has been published and exhibited internationally.