Dr Swati Arora, BA (Delhi) MA (Amsterdam/Warwick) PhD (Exeter)

Profile

My work engages with the intersections of performance and visual culture, feminist theory, Black Studies, and dramaturgies of urban space in the global South. Across my research, writing and pedagogy, I am concerned with how different forms of performance and artistic production challenge colonial and imperial histories, epistemologies, and their corresponding debris.

Prior to joining Queen Mary, I worked as a lecturer at King’s College London. I was a Mellon Fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research and the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, UWC, South Africa, where I remain a Research Fellow. I co-convened the Performance in Public Spaces working group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Currently, I am part of the editorial board of C21 Literature and the executive committee of Theatre and Performance Research Association, UK.

Teaching

I tend to teach on the following modules:

• • Power Plays
  • Culture, Power, Performance
  • Performance and Visual Culture in South Asia
  • Race and Racism in Performance

Research

Research Interests:

• Performance and coloniality
• Transnational feminisms
• South Asian and diasporic performance cultures
• Black geographies

Recent and On-Going Research

My current project looks at the relationship between urban performance practices and public spaces in Delhi. It explores how performances on the streets respond to the neoliberal project of urbanisation and restructuring of the city, while navigating the dynamics of class, caste, gender, sexuality, and religion. I organised several international research events on related themes during my tenure as a co-convener of Performance in Public Spaces working group of the International Federation for Theatre Research.

I have co-edited Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place (2023), together with Nina Lykke, Redi Koobak, Petra Bakos, and Kharnita Mohamed. The conversation is pluriversal―it voices and reflects upon a plurality of geo- and corpopolitical as well as epistemic locations in specific Global South/East/North/West contexts. The writing explores analytical models that encourage transgression of methodological nationalisms that sustain unequal global power relations, and which are still ingrained in the disciplinary ethos of much social science and humanities research. A key focus of the book is methodological―it asks how an engagement with transnational, intersectional, and decolonial feminisms can stimulate epistemic and disciplinary border-crossings. Supported by the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, this volume is the result of a collaboration with Linköping University, University of Bergen, Central European University, and the University of Western Cape.   

With colleagues at the Women’s and Gender Studies Department, UWC, South Africa, I am part of interdisciplinary projects on pedagogies of refusal and critical humanities for sexual and gender justice scholarship. Some of this work has been published as an essay on ‘Performing Refusal’ in Injury and Intimacy (MUP, 2022) and as ‘A manifesto to decentre theatre and performance studies’ (STP, 2021).

My research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation; UK-India Education and Research Initiative; European Commission’s Erasmus Mundus funding; German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD); among others.  

Publications

Book

Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place, with Nina Lykke, Redi Koobak, Petra Bakos and Kharnita Mohamed (eds.). London: Routledge, 2023.

Essays

• ‘Disobedient Women and Theatre Historiography in India’, in The Methuen Drama Handbook to Gender and Theatre, ed. by Sean Metzger and Roberta Mock. London: Bloomsbury, 2024. Forthcoming.
• ‘Colliding Words and Worlds: Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms’, with Nina Lykke, Redi Koobak, Petra Bakos and Kharnita Mohamed, in Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place, ed. by Nina Lykke et al. London: Routledge, 2023.
• ‘On Decolonisation, the University, and Transnational Solidarities’, with Redi Koobak and Nina Lykke, in Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place, ed. by Nina Lykke et al. London: Routledge, 2023.
• ‘Portals of Possibility: On Methodology’, with Nina Lykke and Petra Bakos, in Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place, ed. by Nina Lykke et al. London: Routledge, 2023.
• ‘Intrepid Journeys: On Epistemic Implications of Geopolitical Situatedness’, with Nina Lykke and Kharnita Mohamed, in Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place, ed. by Nina Lykke et al. London: Routledge, 2023.
• ‘A Place Called Home’, Wasafiri (2022).
• ‘Fugitive Aesthetics: Performing Refusal in Four Acts’, in Injury and Intimacy: In the Wake of #MeToo in India and South Africa, by Nicky Falkoff, Shilpa Phadke and Srila Roy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022. Pp. 309-326. 
• ‘A manifesto to decentre theatre and performance studies’, Studies in Theatre and Performance 1 (2021): 12-20.
• ‘Walkin India and South Africa: notes towards a decolonial and transnational feminist politics’, Translation and Performance in an Era of Global Asymmetries, South African Theatre Journal1 (2020): 14-33.
• ‘Walking at Midnight: Women and Danger on Delhi’s Streets’, Walking in/as Publics, Journal of Public Pedagogies 4 (2019): 172-176.

Supervision

I welcome enquiries from potential doctoral students interested in any areas of my research, particularly from communities that are under-represented in academia.

Current students:

• Tobi Poster-Su, ‘Towards a Critical Puppetry: Racialisation and Material Performance’ — with Nicholas Ridout and Martin O’Brien (LAHP funding).
• Jordan/Martin Hell, ‘Black Deviations, Archival Speculations: Black Feminist Practice-led Research in 20^th Century Literature and Performance’ — with Nisha Ramayya (QMPS funding).