The Silver Cord

Alyssa Grossman is a visual anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker who holds a PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media from the University of Manchester, UK (2010). She has conducted fieldwork in Romania, Sweden, and the US, with a research focus on the politics and poetics of cultural memory in everyday life. Her ethnographic films include Into the Field (2005), In the Light of Memory (2010) and Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues (2011). In her writing, films and transdisciplinary/multimedia collaborations, she embraces experimental approaches that unsettle the boundaries between anthropology and contemporary art. She is currently Senior Lecturer in the department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool.

Leda Zimmerman is a documentary storyteller whose career spans award-winning public broadcasting, independent media, and long-form narrative craft. She began her creative work at WGBH, where she researched, produced, and directed acclaimed PBS documentaries and public affairs programming. Zimmerman later became a partner at RiverRun Media, developing media and research projects for the National Science Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Harvard Business School Publishing, and state agencies. Beyond the studio, Zimmerman is a longtime writer and editor for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, crafting narratives that illuminate scientific discovery and human creativity. Across all her work, she brings a producer’s discipline and a storyteller’s intuition to projects that preserve, interpret, and elevate personal and collective histories.