Composer, writer, teacher, organizer, performer, and caregiver, Elizabeth Adams works at the intersection of art, education, and social change. Her compositions use sound to invoke social and political metaphors, and have been performed throughout Europe and New York City. With Danielle Chynoweth she is the author of Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds We Want, (Common Notions, 2026), a guidebook for social change that weaves together ideas from critical theory, Black feminism, cybernetics, and experimental arts practice. Through theory, assignments, and case studies it teaches readers how to analyze problems, consult desires, and design interventions to grow participation as an antidote to fascism. Since 2013 she and Julie Harting have produced Julie & Elizabeth’s Anti-Capitalist Concert Series as occasions to connect musical affect to our political concerns, and invite musicians and audiences to reimagine our relations of production. With the Orfeo Duo, she co-created Songlines, a collaborative public mapping of over seventy NYC blocks through songwriting and parade, and the Garden Performance Project, an instrument building and composition workshop held with neighbors in community gardens. As an actor, she co-starred with Brook Celeste in Susan Parenti’s play, Unrequited, which depicts capitalism and socialism as co-dependent lovers. From 2012-2019 as part of Free University NYC, she co-organized 25 pop-up universities in public spaces to simultaneously manifest direct action, free political education, and movement-building, on topics from abolition to climate justice. From 2016-2021 she proudly organized with the Crown Heights Tenant Union, including for the 2019 rent laws fight. Having earned her doctorate in composition from the CUNY Graduate Center, she has taught music theory at Columbia University, music history and composition at Baruch College, and guest lecturered at The New School, Bard College, The Evergreen State College, and Universidad Iberoamericano. She joined the School for Designing a Society as a student in 2005, and as a teacher in 2010. With Jacob Barton she co-founded Xenharmonic Praxis Summer Camp. She holds other degrees in English, Music, Composition, and Musiktheater from Barnard, Stony Brook, and the Hochschule der Kunste, Bern. You can hear her compositions at soundcloud.com/elizabethadamscomposes, and on the Indexical label; and find out more about Remaking Democracy workshops by visiting this page.