Marissa McClure Sweeny

Dr. Marissa McClure Sweeny is a transdisciplinary educator, artist, and scholar whose work considers early childhood education, art education, feminist pedagogies, and community-based practice. Her research reconceptualizes childhood, caregiving, and creative practice through postdevelopmental, posthuman, and feminist theoretical frameworks. Across schools, museums, community-based programs and other out-of-school pedagogical sites, she centers historically marginalized voices—especially those of young children—through collaborative scholarship, multimodal documentation, and inclusive pedagogical design.

Marissa is the founder and director of SQUAD Art Studio, an alternative community-based laboratory school offering intergenerational, negotiated arts experiences for children and caregivers. SQUAD has partnered with schools, museums, teaching artists, and community organizations to serve hundreds of families across the Pittsburgh region. She is also co-founder of The Scribble Squad, an international research and peer-mentoring collective that amplifies the creative and scholarly work of motherartists and motherscholars.

She is the co-author of the widely adopted Curriculum Inquiry and Design for School and Community-Based Art Education (NAEA Press), and author of the forthcoming Children’s Images within Technologies and Digital Media (Routledge). Her recent editorial work includes Postdevelopmental Approaches to Childhood Digital Arts (Bloomsbury), co-edited with Dr. Mona Sakr, and Transformative Motherscholarship and Art: Public Pedagogies of Childhood(Bloomsbury), co-edited with Drs. Georgina Badoni, Shana Cinquemani, and Elizabeth Garber. Marissa is an inaugural editor of Childhood Art: An International Journal of Research, which centers anti-colonial, majority world, and child-affirming perspectives in early childhood art scholarship.

Marissa’s scholarship has appeared in leading journals such as Studies in Art Education, Visual Arts Research, Art Education and the Journal of Social Theory in Art Education. Her editorial contributions extend to the boards of numerous national and international journals, and she has curated special issues that challenge normative assumptions about childhood, creativity, and curriculum.

Her work has been recognized with prestigious honors including the 2024 June King McFee Award from the Coalition for Feminisms in Art Education, the 2023 Heiges-Lamberski Award in Experiential Education, and the Charles and Irene Putnam Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has received national grant funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, National Art Education Foundation and Remake Learning, among others.

Marissa currently serves in national and international leadership roles focused on equity and inclusion in art education. Her teaching is focused on graduate work in art and museum education. Her program development work in distance learning and interdisciplinary curriculum design has shaped innovative education models across institutions.