Sarah Ashkin’s research tarries at the intersection of
critical whiteness studies, site specific performance, and
liberatory pedagogies. She is the director of GROUND SERIES
dance and social justice
collective and a co-founder of Practice Progress, a
body-based anti-racism facilitation platform.
MFA, Creative Writing, University of Alabama (2015)Master of Divinity, Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University (2018)Master of Sacred Theology, Union Theological Seminary at Columbia University (2019)
How can performative practices of ritualistic
resistance—reclaiming the erotic in autobiographical discourse
with the divine—question and disrupt alternative pasts and
presents, especially as related to embodied trauma and biomedical
violence? AC/BC investigates the relationship between writing,
performance, and documentary on hands and knees, examining states
of being such as becoming, passing, rapture, effacement, and
death, all the while subsisting on speculation and invention as
if they were water and light.
M.F.A., San Francisco State University, Creative Writing
Diana Cage’s practice sits at the intersection of media and
media-making, visual culture, and performative
writing. Cage’s academic interests include feminist science
and technology studies, feminist data science, public health
and health equity, reproductive justice, critical race
studies, trans studies, and queer theory. She is the
author of six nonfiction books on sex and
sexuality, including the Lambda Award-winning The
Lesbian Sex Bible (Quiver, 2014).
Merging ethnography and performance, Jamie’s research regards
mediumship and danced spirit possession in Afro-Brazilian
religions. Her creative practice also involves experimental
and performative modes of writing about/with/as embodied
practices. Jamie has been the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays,
and was a Social Science Research Council DPDF Fellow in Black
Atlantic Studies. Her collection of images and experimental
writing, “Generating Intensities,” was awarded
the 2021 President’s Award for Graduate Writing (first
prize) by the Society for Humani
MA in Composition from Mills CollegeMFA in Electronic Music from Mills College
Gino Robair Forlin is developing strategies for improvisation,
with a focus on how shifts in cognitive load affect the
performer, using resources such as computer mediation, real-time
score creation/interpretation with physical materials, and
game-inspired, rule-based systems.
Julian Gatto is interested in developing a methodology at the
intersection of film, sculpture, installation, performance,
design, poetry and painting
Thinking through acts of translation, framing and collaboration,
his work is centered around actively engaging spaces/formats
as collaborative endeavors performed by both non-humans and
humans alike, asking in whatever might be their accorded language
of preference on whatever clue, guidance or misdirection towards
an articulation of a collective we, however unstable this
formation might be.
he/himM.A. Directing, University of TehranB.A. Acting, University of Tehran
Iliya, a Ph.D. student in Performance Studies (PFS) with a
Designated Emphasis on Science and Technology Studies (STS),
focuses on research in posthumanism, game studies, feminist and
queer studies, postcolonial studies, media studies, surveillance,
and censorship. His current research delves into the
performativity of protests and the public sphere(s) in the
digital revolution, closely focusing on the “Women, Life,
Freedom” movement in Iran.
she / her / hersUniversidad Pedagogica Nacional, B.A., 2014
Regina María Gutiérrez Bermúdez is a doctoral student in
Performance Studies at the University of California, Davis. She
holds an MFA in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Directing and MA in
Performance Studies, degrees obtained at the same university.
Graduated in Dramatic Arts from the Universidad Pedagógica
Nacional (Colombia), she has a trajectory of more than 20 years
as an actress, performer, theater and dance educator, and is an
expert in movement, somatic, and energy work.
M.F.A., UC Davis, Dramatic Art, June 2020M.A., University of San Francisco, Education, September 2004B.A., San Francisco State University, Interdisciplinary Art, May 1994
They/them/she/hersMFA in Ceramics from the University of Colorado Boulder
em irvin (they/them) is a performer who asks clay questions to
consider kinds of encounters with clay, centering material agency
to explore the liberatory possibilities of clay through its
materiality. They think about porosity as a way to access and
dismantle exclusionary boundaries, working to create inclusive
disciplines, studios, and practices. They observe the
clay-artist-body in-action and in-dialogue with clay material,
which drives their research on the liberatory potential of clay.
B.A. Theatre and Dance, James Madison UniversityM.A. Performance Studies
Isa Leal (they/isa) is a
Puerto Rican somatic researcher, performing artist and PhD
candidate in Performance Studies with a designated emphasis in
Practice as Research. Their dissertation project explores
their performance research practice: Dialoguing the Unconscious
and the site of their white-passing body as a transmedia activist
tool for co-ontological agency.
BFA in Choreography and Modern Dance from the University of North Carolina School of the ArtsMA in Scenic Design and Scenography from the Technische Universität Berlin
Karola Lüttringhaus was born and grew up in Berlin, Germany,
where they founded ALBAN ELVED DANCE COMPANY in 1997 to form an
outlet for their diverse artistic pursuits in dance, visual art,
film, scenic design and sound design. Karola has worked as a
freelance artist, choreographer, and educator at theatres and
universities across Europe and the US. In 2007, they incubated
the SARUS FESTIVAL for Site-specific & Experimental Art in 2007
in Wilmington, NC.
he/himMFA, University of Wisconsin-MadisonMVA, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat, IndiaBFA, Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University, Hyderabad, India
Praveen Maripelly is an interdisciplinary artist. In his social
art projects, participants actively engage and
contribute creatively to connect across cultures and engage in
dialogue about real-world problems to connect rural, urban, and
global audiences and build a robust community for positive social
change.
they/them/elleMFA Shakespeare & Performance, Mary Baldwin University (2017)MA Theater Arts, San Jose State University (2013)BA Theater Arts, University of California, Santa Cruz (2008)
Melinda is an autistic teacher, historian, and theater
professional who started the PhD program in 2022. Their interests
bisect adaptation, performance, and disability studies. Their PAR
seeks to explore autonarrativity and embodiment within the work/s
of neurodiverse theatermakers.
California State University, Sacramento, B.A. Dance, May 2013
Diego Martinez-Campos is a performance artist
from Mexico City whose practice/research focuses on the
entanglements and tensions between embodied practices, the
performance of identities, and gendered / racialized / colonized
modes of expression. Diego’s work incorporates choreography,
scripting, music, drawing, writing, and painting, and it centers
anti-oppressive methodologies and relationalities.
she/herMFA - Digital Arts and New Media, UCSCBFA - School of the Art Institute of Chicago.MSc + BSc - Animal Behavior, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Avital Meshi is a new media and performance artist. While
examining Artificial Intelligence technology, Meshi invites
viewers to become entangled with algorithms and discuss identity,
surveillance, face/body recognition, image/text generation,
movement, story-telling, and world-building. Taking inspiration
from posthuman performativity and agential realism, she develops
her performative art practice by spending time with algorithms,
trying to communicate with them, and finding ways to collaborate
with them.
Elmira is a video performance artist whose research-based
performances for the camera concern religious rituals and
their contribution to her cross cultural identity.
Heather Nolan holds a Master’s Degree in Cinema and Media Studies
from UCLA and is currently a PhD Candidate in Performance Studies
at UC Davis. Her current project looks at the involvement of
consumer grade wearable self-monitoring devices in production of
knowledge about the self. She is specifically interested in
wearables designed to detect, label, and alter brain activity and
mood. Heather has previously developed theater games workshops
for foster youth related to the internet and social media. She
received her BA from Dartmouth College.
Aramo Olaya is a non-binary queer Spanish dancer and researcher
in the fields of feminist and queer touch improvisation, and
performance theory. They hold a PhD in the Sociology of Gender,
and a bachelor in Philosophy, and are now a PhD candidate in
Performance Studies at UC Davis. They were a pioneer of queer
tango in Spain, and they hold a certificate in contact
improvisation by FCI Madrid. Current interests include developing
contact improvisation as a language in which to communicate with
cats and aliens, and to expand childhood embodied knowledges and
sexualities.
BA in Art (studio) and History of Art and Visual Culture (with honors) from UC Santa Cruz 2018MFA in Art Studio from UC Davis 2020
After completing the Art Studio MFA at UC Davis in 2020 Smith
apprenticed to foundational eco-artist Newton Harrison in 2021,
made bubbles in 2022, and spent 2023 entertaining a 99-bed
nursing facility.
