Brooke Anne Hofsess (M.A., Teachers College, Columbia University; Ph.D., University of Georgia) is an associate professor of art education and assistant chair for student experience in the Art Department at Appalachian State University. Commitments to creative, ecological, and relational pedagogies and methodologies inform her art-based educational research projects. Her artistic practice occurs at the intersection of handmade paper and books, fibers, and alternative photo processes—influencing her innovative approaches to art teacher education and her contributions to qualitative inquiry. For example, her recent collaboration, Ecologies of Girlhood (an intergenerational and interdisciplinary community arts initiative) employs material feminisms to reimagine concepts of place and sustainability.

Her work in the field of art education, across teaching, research, service, and leadership, has been recognized as worthy of institutional and internationally-competitive awards. She has been awarded the Excellence in Teaching Award from the College of Fine and Applied Arts and a Graduate Research Associate Mentoring Program Award by the Graduate School at Appalachian. The National Art Education Association awarded her the Preservice Chapter Sponsor of Excellence. Additional honors she has earned include the Elliot Eisner Doctoral Research Award in Art Education from the National Art Education Association, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Arts Based Educational Research special interest group of the American Educational Research Association. She received a National Art Education Foundation Research Award for a collaborative project with Dr. Christina Hanawalt (University of Georgia), Exploring Reggio-Inspired Approaches to Mentoring New Art Teachers in an Era of Accountability. Most recently she was accepted into the BRIDGES Academic Leadership Program for Women in Higher Education through UNC Chapel Hill. 

Her research has been published widely in academic journals such as Qualitative Inquiry,International Journal of Education and the Arts, Visual Arts Research, Critical Studies <=> Cultural Methodologies, International Journal of Education through Art, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, Art/Research International,Art Education, and Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology. She is the author of Unfolding Afterglow: Letters and Conversations on Teacher Renewal (Sense Publishers), and co-editor of a special issue of Qualitative Inquiry, “Unsettling Traditions: Reimagining the Craft of Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Inquiry.”