Graduate Students
Max Abner
B.S. in Performance Studies, Northwestern University
Max Abner is a PhD candidate, musician, and curator who hails from Louisville, KY, has deep roots in Chicago, and is currently based in Oakland. Working from an anti-colonial settler positionality, he draws together discourses...Read more about Max Abner
Lena Chen
B.A. in Sociology, Harvard University; M.F.A. in Art, Carnegie Mellon University
Lena Chen is an artist and Ph.D. student at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies. Her research examines the performance practices of Asian...Read more about Lena Chen
Leia Devadason
B.A. (Honors) in Music, University of Cambridge; M.St. in Musicology, University of Oxford
Leia is a writer, composer, and dance-learner from Singapore. Her research interests span music/sound philosophy, queer theory and performance, aesthetics under 24/7 capitalism—and...Read more about Leia Devadason
Talia Dixon
B.F.A. in Modern Dance, minor in Native American Studies, University of Utah
Talia is an enrolled member of the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians. She aspires to research and document the performance of her peoples' culture and identity within both historic and contemporary contexts. Her...Read more about Talia Dixon
Laila Guadalupe Espinoza
B.F.A. in Community Arts, minor in Individualized Interdisciplinary Studies, California College of the Arts; M.A. in Performance Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Laila Guadalupe is the daughter of a Roma mother and Mexican father, raised by her grandmother and aunties in...Read more about Laila Guadalupe Espinoza
Juliana Fadil-Luchkiw
B.A. Eugene Lang College, The New School; B.F.A. Parsons School of Design, The New School; M.A. Gallatin School of Individualized Study, New York University
Juliana's dissertation project deals with how SWANA cultural practices and gestures are re-routed through certain forms of...Read more about Juliana Fadil-Luchkiw
Patricia Gomes
B.A. in Art History, Global Gender Studies, University at Buffalo; M.A. in Performance Studies, New York University
Patricia is a first-generation American from a Brazilian family who largely grew-up in upstate New York. Her research explores cultural geographies and performance theory...Read more about Patricia Gomes
Ariah Henderson
Born and raised in the East Bay, Ariah's research draws on the cultural richness of her upbringing. She explores food as a performance mechanism and means of resistance in creative communities during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Her background in casual fine dining and dance studies guides...Read more about Ariah Henderson
Zachary Herring
Looking through a kaleidoscopic lens that blends evolutionary theory, diasporic fugitive practice, science in vivo, and environmentalism, the intention of Zachary’s research is to help begin collapsing the distance between the “Self” and the “Other.” As polarization grows globally, his...Read more about Zachary Herring
Leenah
Leenah is a Libyan archivist, radio producer, and open-source investigator. Her research lies at the intersection of subversive radio histories, surveillance, and Islamic dream theory. Leenah’s doctoral project centers on the sonic cultures of the Algerian anti-colonial struggle; here, she...Read more about Leenah
Zihan Loo
M.F.A. in Studio Practice, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; M.A. in Performance Studies, New York University
Zihan is a queer artist from Singapore with a research focus on distended and pragmatic gestures of resistance under illiberal regimes. His work strives to reconcile the...Read more about Zihan Loo
AeJay Antonis Marquis
AeJay Antonis Marquis (They/Them) is a multi-hyphenate performance artist, scholar, educator, and activist whose work centers the decolonization of the theatrical canon, the black avant-garde, and queer political performance practice. Their current research seeks to explore Queer,...Read more about AeJay Antonis Marquis
Fernando Martinez
B.A. and M.A. in Communication Studies, California State University Northridge
Self-proclaimed L.A. trash, Fernando is a performer and spoken-word artist whose research is centered in areas of Chicano and Central-American issues informed by Racial-Cultural Geographies, Ritual, Spatial...Read more about Fernando Martinez
Dahlia Nayar
M.F.A. in Dance/Choreography, Hollins University
Dahlia’s project studies embodied manifestations of Quiet in multiple mediums of minoritarian performance. Her study curates a constellation of contemporary artists working in dance, theater, sound, and visual art with an
...Read more about Dahlia NayarPablo Paredes
B.A. in Ethnic Studies, minors in African American and Chicano Studies, University of California, Berkeley
Pablo is the son of Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian migrants, a US Navy veteran/war resister, student-parent, spoken word artist and Bombero from the South Bronx, New York. With...Read more about Pablo Paredes
Vincente Perez
B.A. in Anthropology, Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies, University of Chicago
Vincente Perez is a poet, scholar, and writer working at the intersection of poetry, Hip-Hop, and digital culture. He makes work that refuses binary thinking, which allows him to be in
...Read more about Vincente PerezEvan Sakuma
Evan Sakuma (he/they) 'comes out' from the East Asian ethnic enclave of Monterey Park, CA. Their work, hardened further by the 'Queerantine', centers the performance of care within queer communities of color. While a theory head at times, Evan incorporates praxis of 'Gaysian' community building...Read more about Evan Sakuma
Maria Silk
B.A. in Theater and Performance Studies, M.A. in Art History, Stanford University
Maria Silk is a San Francisco-based artist working in choreography, performance, and video. At Berkeley, her dissertation research takes an ecological approach to the study of San...Read more about Maria Silk
Crystal Song
B.A. in History, Ethnicity & Race Studies, Columbia University
Crystal is a dancer and PhD candidate in Performance Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation examines Asian American ballroom dance cultures, with a focus on how model minority personhood...Read more about Crystal Song
Rebecca Struch
B.A. in Theatre Arts, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota; M.A. in Applied Theatre Arts, University of Southern California
Rebecca Struch centers social justice and community engagement in her work as a performance scholar and artist, applied...Read more about Rebecca Struch
Jaclyn Zhou
B.S. in Journalism, Asian Languages and Cultures, Northwestern University
Jaclyn's current research focuses on race, tourism and digital technology. Other interests include Asian and Asian American popular cultures, animality studies, science fiction, queer studies, and high strangeness...Read more about Jaclyn Zhou