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Participant Biographies

Nobuko Anan is a Newton International Fellow in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick. She received her Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies at UCLA in 2009. Her main research interests are modern and contemporary Japanese theatre/performance and visual arts, and the way that they intersect with nationhood and gender/sexuality in transnational contexts. In her doctoral dissertation, she discussed Japanese women’s parodic performance of the American Other and how it relates to their re-imagination of their identity. She is currently working on her book, which explores the intersection between Japanese girls culture and theatrical/social performance. Her most recent article, "Two-dimensional Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Women's Performance" has been accepted by TDR.
 
 
Elaine Aston is Professor of Contemporary Performance at Lancaster University, UK. Her monographs include Caryl Churchill (1997/ 2001); Feminist Theatre Practice (1999) and Feminist Views on the English Stage (2003). She is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (2000, with Janelle Reinelt); Feminist Futures: Theatre, Performance, Theory (2006, with Geraldine Harris), Staging International Feminisms (2007, with Sue-Ellen Case), and The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill (2009, with Elin Diamond). She currently serves as Senior Editor of Theatre Research International.
 
 
Sruti Bala is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Theatre Studies, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and co-ordinates the MA International Performance Research programme there. Her research and praxis is located at the crossroads of Theatre/Performance Studies and Peace and Conflict Research. She has served as Guest Lecturer at the universities of Hyderabad (India), Ghent (Belgium) and Hull/Scarborough (UK).
Sruti completed her doctorate from the University of Mainz/Germany in 2007 with a dissertation on the performativity of nonviolent protest in 20th century South Asia. She has been a fellow of the Heinrich Boell Foundation, German Ecumenical Services, DAAD, Mainz and Mumbai University. She has studied German Literature, Philosophy and Peace and Conflict Studies in the universities of Mumbai and Bonn and has several years of experience in participatory theatre work and community radio. She is founding member of the Berlin-based collective sabisa – performing change, which is involved in promoting international exchange between practitioners of participatory theatre methods in the context of conflict.
 
 
Samik Bandopadhyay received his M.A. in English Literature, Calcutta University, 1961, and was Junior Research Fellow, Anthropological Survey of India 1962-64. He was Lecturer, Departments of English Literature and Drama, Rabindra Bharati University, 1966-73. Regional Editor, Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1973-82. Editor, Seagull Books, 1982-88. Producer Emeritus, All India Radio and Doordarshan, 1989-92. Research Professor, Asiatic Society, Calcutta, 1995-97. He had been co-opted member, General Council, Sangeet Natak Akademi (for two consecutive terms), and Central Board of Film Certification (two terms). He was a member of the 14 Member Indian Delegation to the East-West Theatre Seminar, organized by the International Theatre Institute, New Delhi, 1966, and panelist at seminars on Indian Theatre as part of Festivals of India, in USSR and Germany, at Tashkent 1987, and Berlin 1992. He has lectured in the USA, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Has translated plays and fiction by Badal Sircar and Mahesweta Devi, and reconstructed for publication film scripts for films made by Shyam Benegal and Mrinal Sen. Presently, he is Editor, Thema, Calcutta; Visiting Faculty at the annual film appreciation course, conducted by the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) and Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune; Member, Executive Academic Council, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan and FTII, Pune; Member, National School of Drama Society, Vice President, National School of Drama, New Delhi.
 
 
Trina Nileena Banerjee (b. 19.03.1981) After completing her MA in English Literature from Jadavpur University, Trina Nileena Banerjee proceeded to complete a Masters of Studies (M St.) in English at the University of Oxford on a Felix Scholarship. Her specializations were Postcolonial Literature, British Modernism and Feminism.
She is currently a doctoral student at CSSS, Kolkata. Her thesis title is: Performance, Autonomy and the Politics of the Marginal: Women in the Group Theatre Movement in India (1950-2005). She plans to submit the completed thesis to Jadavpur University this year (2010). She is currently also working on a monograph on Embodying Suffering: Interface(s) between Women’s Protest Movements and Women’s Performance in Contemporary Manipur (1980-2010) on a two-year project grant from Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Asian Studies Centre. Her research interests include Gender, Performance, Political Theatre, Theories of the Body, Postcolonial Theatre and South Asian History. She has read a number of papers at International and national seminars and also takes classes at the department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University.
 
 
Stella Bruzzi Her main areas of research interest are gender and identity in film, particularly masculinity; documentary film and television; fashion and costume; film television and the law. She is on the advisory board of Studies in Documentary and the BFI's Television Classics series. Her most recent publication is 'Men's Cinema', a 35,000-word study of masculinity and mise-en-scene in Hollywood cinema for Wallflower Press's Close-Up series and she is currently working on or has recently completed articles on Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema, Hollywood and the New Look, the representation of the legal system in Fritz Lang's Fury and British documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield.
Stella is co-organiser of The Future of Fashion Studies: A Fashion Network.
 
 
Soumyabrata Choudhury teaches at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on The Pragmatics of Death in the Figures of Socretes, Antigone and Jesus Christ. He has published essays on Psychoanalysis, Philosophy and Theatre. He has been working as an actor and theatre director for the last 20 years. Presently, he is on a Fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, India, and is working on a research project titled Theatre, Number, Event: Three studies on the Relationship between Sovereignty, Power and Truth.
 
 
Jim Davis joined the School of Theatre Performance and Cultural Policy Studies at Warwick as Professor of Theatre Studies in 2004, after eighteen years teaching Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where he was latterly Head of the School of Theatre, Film and Dance. In Australia he was also President of the Australasian Drama Studies Association (the tertiary association of drama teachers), and member of the Board of Studies of the National Institute of Dramatic Art. He was an assessor for the Australian National Playwrights’ Conference, and co-organiser of the first conference held in Australia by the International Federation for Theatre Research. Prior to leaving for Australia he spent ten years teaching in London at what is now Roehampton University. His major research interest is in nineteenth-century British theatre and his most recent books are an edited collection of essays on Victorian Pantomime (just published by Palgrave Macmillan), a volume on Edmund Kean in the Lives of Shakespearean Actors series and a joint study of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century ‘Reflecting the Audience: London 1840-1880’ published by the University of Iowa Press. This was awarded the 2002 Theatre Book Prize for the best book on theatre published in that year. He has previously published books on John Liston, a nineteenth-century actor, and on the Britannia Theatre, as well as editing a volume of the plays of H. J. Byron for Cambridge University Press. He has just completed a monograph on the visual representation of English comic actors 1780-1830. Future projects include a collaboration with Professor Jacky Bratton on a two volume edition of nineteenth-century adaptations of Dickens and with Professor Veronica Kelly on transnational performance between Britain and Australia, 1850-1950. He was department chair at Warwick from 2004-2009.
 
 
Bishnupriya Dutt is a practitioner-researcher. She has acted in forty plays and directed five. At present she is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India. She played an important role in setting up the first department of its kind in India to study the arts. Her area of research includes colonial and postcolonial theatre in India, feminist readings of Indian Theatre and performative practices and popular culture. She is conducting a University Grant Commission project on Professional and semi Professional Women performers in Indian popular performances. Recent publications include ‘Historicizing Actress Stories: English Actresses in India’ in anthology, ed Dr. Lata Singh, OUP 2008 and ‘Actress Stories: Binodini and Amal Allana’ in Staging International Feminisms (eds) Elaine Aston and Sue Ellen Case (Palgrave Macmillan 2008), Actors from an Alternate Space (Epic Theatre, August 2008) and Engendering Performance: Indian Performer’s Journey in Search of an Identity (co-authored with Urmimala Sarkar) (Sage 2010). She has completed a research project with the Charles Wallace India Trust in UK, researching the pioneer English actresses who came to India (1789-1842). Her performance work includes “Nati’ work-shop based performance on five actress autobiographies.
 
 
Milija Gluhovic is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance in the School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. Milija’s research interests include contemporary European theatre and performance; memory studies and psychoanalysis; discourses of European identity, migrations and human rights; religion and politics; cosmopolitanism and globalisation; contemporary North American and North African theatre and performance. He is currently completing a monograph Performing European Memories: Trauma, Ethics, Politics, and co-editing (with Karen Fricker, Royal Holloway) a volume Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings, and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest, both for Palgrave Macmillan. He is also working on his second monograph, which explores a wide range of theatrical representations originating from different parts of Europe, which address the changing cultures of Europe in the post-1989 era. Milija is also the director of an Erasmus Mundus MA in International Performance Research, an EU sponsored program taught collaboratively at the University of Warwick, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Tampere (in collaboration with the University of Helsinki) and the University of Arts in Belgrade (from 2011).
 
 
Susan Haedicke completed her PhD at University of Michigan/Ann Arbor (USA) in 1984. Before coming to University of Warwick, she taught in the United States at University of Maryland/College Park, The George Washington University, Mount Holyoke College, and University of Massachusetts/Amherst. She has also worked as a professional dramaturg in France (with Friches Théâtre Urbain, a street theatre company based in Paris) and in the United States.
Her primary scholarly research focuses on various aspects of European street arts. This research has resulted in several conference papers, book chapters, journal articles, and a forthcoming book entitled Contemporary European Street Arts: Aesthetics and Politics, under contract with Palgrave Macmillan. She has also participated in several professional exchanges with street arts professionals, for example, presenter at a three-day international colloquium, Nomadic University, in 2008; external examiner for post-graduate street arts students of the professional training institute, FAI AR (Formation Avancée et Itinerante des Arts de la Rue) in 2009; and as judge of new performances for the prize of “Best Street Performance” at Mira Miro Street Theatre Festival, Ghent, Belgium, 2009 and 2010. In addition, she has conducted research on contemporary Franco-Algerian drama and on applied drama (community-based performance).
Her practice-as-research includes work as dramaturg on devised or adapted pieces for the street or other non-traditional performance venues. She is currently on the Executive Committee for IFTR (International Federation for Theatre Research)
 
 
Nadine Holdsworth completed her PhD at Loughborough University in 1995 and lectured at De Montfort University for six years from 1993-1999. She joined the department at Warwick in January 2000 where she has continued to develop her research and teaching focus on post-war British theatre. Whilst at Warwick she has designed modules that address her interests in Twentieth Century political theatres and contemporary theatre and theories of identity, particularly in relation to nation, gender, ethnicity and globalisation. She has conducted a significant amount of research on John McGrath and edited Naked Thoughts that Roam About (Nick Hern, 2002), a selection of McGrath’s writings on theatre that was shortlisted for the 2002 Theatre Book Prize, and edited and introduced a collection of McGrath’s plays in Plays for England (Exeter University Press, 2005). More recently, she has been researching the theatre, creative processes and community activism of the theatre director Joan Littlewood. She published Joan Littlewood as part of the Routledge Performance Practitioners Series in 2006 and has recently completed Joan Littlewood’s Theatre for Cambridge University Press. Her interest in theatre and national identities has resulted in Theatre & Nation (Palgrave, 2010) for the Palgrave theatre & series and several essays on modern and contemporary Scottish and Northern Irish theatre that have been published in journals and edited collections including The Cambridge History of British Theatre Vol. 3 (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Cool Britannia: Political Theatre in the 1990s (Palgrave, 2007). She also co-edited A Concise Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Theatre (Blackwell, 2007).
 
 
Yvette Hutchison has taught at the Universities of Natal, Stellenbosch and the Western-Cape in South Africa in both English and Drama Departments from 1988 – 1997. Her PhD is from the Institute for African Studies in Germany, obtained with a DAAD scholarship in 1997-8, while registered in the Drama Department at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She taught at Winchester University from 1999-2006, particularly on the BA Drama and Theatre in the Community and MA in Theatre & Media for Development. She joined the Department of Theatre & Performance Studies at Warwick in April 2006 where she continues to develop her research and teaching focused on theatre in the African context, particularly South Africa, and intercultural theatre practices.
Her primary research interest is African theatre and performance, and its relationship to history, myth, and memory, particularly in relation to hidden and forgotten memories and contemporary identity construction in post-Apartheid South Africa.
Her work has been published in journals and edited collections including Contemporary Theatre Review, South African Theatre Journal, A History of African Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (Palgrave, 2009). This year she has co-edited a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review, focused on Theatre-making in Africa; and guest edited Histories: 1850-1950, for the African Theatre series (James Currey). She is currently working on the three year Leverhulme Research project entitled Performing Memory: Theatricalising Identity in Contemporary South Africa.
 
 
Silvija Jesrovic is Associate Professor in the School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy at the University of Warwick (UK) and a playwright. She studied playwriting and dramaturgy at the University of Belgrade (1989-1992) and completed postgraduate studies at the University of Toronto in 2002. From 1990 to 1996 she was a freelance playwright, dramaturge and journalist. Before coming to Warwick in 2005, she was SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer at York University in Toronto.
She is the author of Theatre of Estrangement: Theory, Practice, Ideology (University of Toronto Press, 2006). Recently, she co-edited, with Yana Meerzon, the monograph Performance, Exile, ‘America’ (Palgrave Mcmillan 2009). Her articles appeared in numerous journals including Research in Drama Education, Substance, Modern Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Canadian Theatre Review, Balagan, and others. Currently, she has been completing her book Space, Performance, Utopia: Cities of War, Cities of Exile (Palgrave Mcmillan).
Silvija’s latest play Not My Story was last performed in Toronto in 2004.
 
 
Baz Kershaw was formerly Chair of Drama at the University of Bristol, and Director of the five-year research project PARIP (Practice as Research in Performance). He trained and worked as a design engineer before reading English and Philosophy at Manchester University and holds higher degrees from the Universities of Hawaii and Exeter. He has extensive experience as a director and writer in experimental, radical and community-based theatre, including productions at the legendary Drury Lane Arts Lab in London. More recently he has mounted site-specific productions on the Bristol heritage ship, the SS Great Britain. He has published many articles in international journals, and is the author of The Politics of Performance (Routledge 1992) and The Radical in Performance (Routledge 1999), and editor of The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol 3 – Since 1895 (2004). His current research includes investigation of the natures of performance ecologies.
 
 
Royona Mitra is a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for the MA in Drama and Performance at the University of Wolverhampton where she teaches physical theatre, intercultural performance and critical theory. She has an MA in Physical Theatre from Royal Holloway, University of London where she is currently completing a PhD on the British-Asian artist Akram Khan. Her research interests include South Asian performance practices, the interventionist body in diasporic choreography and intercultural performance. In 2008 Royona was awarded the New Scholar’s Prize by the International Federation of Theatre Research. She has published in Feminist Review Journal, Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory and has contributed to edited book projects on performance, culture and identity.
 
 
Urmimala Sarkar Munsi is a Visiting Faculty, teaching Theatre and Performance Studies and Documentation of living traditions at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
She is a Social Anthropologist and a Dancer/ Choreographer, with research focus on “Indian Dance: Theory and Practice”, “Living Traditions”, “Dance, Gender, Society”, Therapeutic Use of Movement Systems” and “Performance Documentation”.
She was a dancer/ teacher/choreographer/administrator at the Uday Shankar India Culture Centre Centre till 2004, training since the age of five as a dancer under Smt Amala Shankar, and has performed extensively with the troupe and individually within India and abroad.
Urmimala has contributed articles to numerous journals, and has edited “Dance: Transcending Borders”, published by Tulika Books in 2008. “Engendering Performance”, a book jointly authored by her and Dr. Bishnupriya Dutt has been published by SAGE Publications. She is also the co-editor with Dr. Stephanie Burridge, of “Traversing Tradition: Celebrating Dance in India” - a book of the Routledge “Celebrating Dance in Asia and the Pacific” Series.
She is the Vice President, South Asia, and the co-chair of Research and Documentation Network of the World Dance Alliance- Asia Pacific , and the Secretary, Dance Alliance- India Chapter.
 
 
Janelle Reinelt is one of the most internationally respected academics in the discipline and completed a four-year term as the President of the International Federation for Theatre Research in 2007, the leading international academic organisation for theatre and performance studies. She is co-editor of the book series ‘Studies in International Performance for Palgrave Macmillan’ and a former editor of Theatre Journal. Her major area of interest is contemporary performance with an emphasis on contemporary British theatre, and international performance research and pedagogy. Her books include After Brecht: British Epic Theatre (1994), Critical Theory and Performance (1992, co-edited with Joseph Roach; new and revised edition 2007), The Performance of Power: Theatrical Discourse and Politics (1991, co-edited with Sue-Ellen Case), The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (2000, with Elaine Aston), Crucibles of Change: Social Change and Performance (2000) and Gender in Cultural Performances (2005). Her most recent book, The Political Theatre of David Edgar: Negotiation and Retrieval, written with her partner, political philosopher Gerald Hewitt will be published this coming spring by Cambridge University Press.
 
 
Shrinkhla Sahai is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India. Her research concerns include Aural Culture, Radio Studies, Postcolonial theory and technology and performance. Her M. Phil dissertation titled, Voice as the Site of Performance : Relocating the Presenter in Contemporary Radio Space was submitted in July 2009 under the supervision of Dr. Bishnupriya Dutt. She has presented papers on theatre, dance, radio and sound at national and international conferences. She is trained in Indian classical dance and a performer in the troupe of Guru Saroja Vaidyanathan. She is also a radio broadcaster and is currently working with a community radio station in Kumaon valley. As a lecturer at Centre for Media Studies, New Delhi, she takes classes on ‘Cultural Studies and Communication’ and ‘Radio Production’.
 
 
H.S. Shivaprakash is a leading poet, translator and playwright writing in Kannada. He is professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where he was the Dean(September 2008-August 2010). He has seven anthologies of poems, twelve plays, and several other books to his credit. His works have been widely translated into English, French, Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. His plays have been performed in Kannada, Tamil, Hindi, Urdu, Assamese, Marathi, Manipuri and Malayalam. Shivaprakash is also a well-known authority on Bhakti, Sufi and other mystic traditions. His translation of Kannada Bhakti poetry, ‘Keeping Vigil of Rudra’ has been published in Penguin Classics series. In 2000, he was selected for the International Writing Program of the School of Letters, University of Iowa, and is honorary fellow of the school. Shivaprakash published his first play Mahachaitra in 1986. He has won many awards including the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi Award(1996). His other plays include Sultan Tipu, Shakespeare Swapnanauke, Manteswamy Kathaprasanga and many more.
 
 
Tim White is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick, having previously held a full-time post at Central Saint Martins in London.
After completing an undergraduate degree in English Literature in Birmingham he undertook an MA in Theatre at Lancaster University gaining a distinction. After several years working as a stage technician at Birmingham repertory Theatre he was awarded British Academy funding to complete a PhD at Warwick concerning the use of the performative to disrupt form in the work of artists since 1960, which he completed in 1994.
He currently teaches modules on practical video, experimental music, the American Avant-Garde and performing online. Publications include Diaghilev to the Pet Shop Boys (Lund Humphries Publishers, 1996) as well as articles for Contemporary Theatre Review and Dance Theatre Journal and, most recently for the September 2010 issue of Performance Research concerning Listening.
Current research interests include music, online performance and the theatricality of dining.
 
 
Nicolas Whybrow is Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick University. His published books include Street Scenes: Brecht, Benjamin and Berlin (2005) and, as editor, Performance and the Contemporary City: an Interdisciplinary Reader (2010). A monograph entitled Art and the City has also just appeared (October 2010).
Nicolas’s undergraduate teaching centres on Performance and Text in the second year, which is a practical and theoretical module on experimental approaches to making performance work and on Performance and the Contemporary City in the third year. In 2009 he received academic fellowship funding from the University’s Reinvention Centre to undertake a ‘performative mapping’ of the city of Venice with a group of 24 students taking the latter module. And in 2010 he was a recipient of the Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence. Nicolas is also the department’s Director of Graduate Studies.