Tessa Brinza

Tessa Brinza is a movement artist, arts in health researcher, and community engagement facilitator. In her role as Research Coordinator for the Lab, she aims to strengthen the health of communities and to promote collective wellbeing by way of interdisciplinary collaboration and learning. Tessa holds a graduate degree in arts in medicine from the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine. Her research interests are at the intersections of the arts and public health, trauma in relationship to the body, and arts engagement that builds community. 

She has worked in both clinical and community settings, including facilitating dance and movement workshops for survivors of intimate partner violence with Gibney Dance, providing arts interventions in hospitals with the Gifts of Art program at Michigan Medicine, and studying theatre as a response to natural disaster in Puerto Rico, with the University of Florida and Y No Había Luz. 

Tessa has co-authored publications in Frontiers in Psychiatry and Frontiers in Public Health, and presented research at the National Organization for Arts in Health 2022 conference. Tessa is a dancer by training and by passion. She obtained her undergraduate degree in dance and English, secondary education, from Grand Valley State University. She has choreographed and performed professionally in New York City venues including Triskelion Arts and Greenspace. She is also certified as a trauma-informed yoga instructor.