Barbara Sellers-Young taught movement, acting and Asian theatre at the Department of Theatre & Dance from 1993 to 2008. She served on various university committees at UC Davis, taught as a member of the Davis Honors program and was Chair of Theatre & Dance from summer 2001 through spring 2006. She also served as Interim Executive Director of the Mondavi Center from April 2005 until June 2006.

Dr. Sellers-Young served as dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University from 2008 to 2013 (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), where she is currently a professor in the Department of Dance.

Dr. Sellers-Young also taught at universities in England, China, and Australia and gave invited lectures at other institutions in the United States and elsewhere. Her research projects on the intersection of dance, body, and globalization have taken place in Sudan, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Nepal, China, England, and Australia.

Her articles can be found in The Journal of Popular Culture, Theatre Topics, Asian Theatre Journal, Dance Research Journal and several edited volumes. She is the author of three books: Teaching Personality with Gracefulness, Breathing, Movement, Exploration and an edited volume titled Bellydance: Orientalism, Transnationalism and Harem Fantasy.

Professor Sellers-Young’s research has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Centre for Cultural Research into Risk, Charles Sturt University, Australia, as well as numerous grants, including a Davis Humanities Fellowship and a Pacific Rim Planning Grant. She was for two years the convener of the International Federation of Theatre Research Working Group: Theory and Practice of Performing and is President-elect of the Congress on Research in Dance.