Special Projects Consultant
September 2025-Present
Laura Marcus Green is an independent folklorist based in the South Carolina Midlands. At AFS, she is Co-Project Manager, along with Cassie Rosita Patterson, for the Folk Arts Partnership Professional Development Institute, a collaborative project between AFS and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Recent work includes a 2025 folklife survey for the Traditional Arts Network in Portland, Maine. Previously, Laura was the Folklife & Traditional Arts Director at the South Carolina Arts Commission and the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum (2016-2024). In those roles, she managed folklife grant and award programs, conducted fieldwork, coordinated public programs in conjunction with folklife exhibitions, and co-developed projects with community partners, including the Folklife Field School, Communal Pen Writing Workshops, a pilot creative aging series, and FOLKFabulous@theFair (a folklife festival at the South Carolina State Fair). Prior to moving to South Carolina, Laura was founding Community Engagement Coordinator for the Gallery of Conscience at the Museum of International Folk Art/Gallery of Conscience (GoC) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In that capacity, she worked collaboratively with the GoC team and diverse community partners and tradition bearers to co-curate interactive, participatory exhibitions, special projects, and public programs. She also facilitated community dialogues, as part of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience’s National Dialogues on Immigration initiative. Selected earlier experience includes: Program Associate, Fund for Folk Culture; and founding Coordinator of the Arts for New Immigrants Program, Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization in Portland, Oregon. From 2005-16, Laura worked independently as a folklife fieldworker and researcher, writer, curator and consultant for the Louisiana Division of the Arts, South Carolina Arts Commission, Iowa Arts Council, New Mexico Arts, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts, among others. Beginning in 2006, Laura and Amy Skillman co-founded and co-directed Building Cultural Bridges, a national interdisciplinary initiative merging the arts and social services in support of refugee and immigrant heritage through publications and community-based workshops. As an adjunct instructor, Laura has taught folklore and ethnography-related courses at The Colorado College and at Lewis and Clark College.
Laura received her M.A. in Anthropology/Folklore with a minor in Cultural Geography from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986. She earned her Ph.D. in Folklore with an Anthropology minor from Indiana University in 1998. Her doctoral research explored historic and contemporary Navajo/Diné trading and art as a cultural meeting place. Her enduring research and practice interests include material culture (especially fiber arts!), community creative writing, and community-based projects that live at the crossroads of cultural expressions, social services/social justice, and community development.