I am an intercultural and interdisciplinary practitioner/scholar of contemporary performance with extensive training, teaching and devising experience in psychophysical, post-dramatic, digital, laboratory and political forms of theatre and performance. I joined the team of Performance at York St John University in September 2022 as a Lecturer in Acting, Drama and Theatre.
I hold a practice-based PhD degree in Drama from the University of Exeter (funded by the International Doctorate Studentship of College of Humanities), an MA degree in Performance Studies from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (funded by the Fulbright Master's Scholarship) and a BA in Sociology with a minor in Political Science from Middle East Technical University (Orta Dogu Teknik Üniversitesi) Ankara, Turkey. My MA research provided an autoethnographic account of the politics and aesthetics of community-based theatre in the US context. My PhD research, "Virginity as Performance: A Practice-based Inquiry on (female) Embodiment and Memory in Contemporary Turkey and Beyond" examined the relationship between body, language, identity and ideology through performance methodologies.
I am an associate of Urban Research Theater; a member of the "Judaica Project: A Laboratory of Songwork" (AHRC, 2017, University of Huddersfield, a member of the Embodied Research Working Group at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR); assistant editor of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal Blog and a contributing editor of Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies. I presented my performance research internationally at Qualitative Inquiry (Ql), Performance Studies International (PSi), National Communication Association (NCA), The Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA), Feminist & Women's Studies Association (FWSA), Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), Royal Anthropological Institute, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (New York), The Grotowski Institute (Poland), and The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU).
I have been teaching in higher education since 2010 (Southern Illinois University Carbondale, University of Exeter, Louisiana State University and York St John University). I have taught and designed a wide range of theory and practice-based modules on undergraduate and postgraduate levels including Oral Interpretation and Public Speaking, Staging the Text, Research and Performance, Performance of Literature, Performance Composition, Performing Sound and Voice, Performing the Self and Autobiographical Performance, and Body Performance Culture.
Prior to my position at York St John, I worked as the manager of HopKins Black Box Theatre - the performance laboratory of the Communication/Performance Studies Department at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge where I advised and produced several undergraduate and graduate projects in devised performance, object theatre, personal narrative and multimedia installation (2018 to 2022).
At York St John, I teach across different undergraduate programs and years (in Acting, Drama and Theatre, Drama: Education and Community and Musical Theatre), and supervise MA projects in Theatre and Performance. I am the coordinator of Year 1. I convene the Voice (Year 1) and Dissertation (Year 3) modules. My students and I collaborate with students and staff across programmes in the interdisciplinary research network "Living Lab" (in the modules such as Performance and Ecology, and Ensemble: Political Performance).
My most recent research is at the intersection of body, ecology, identity and performance. I practice and develop phenomenological, audiovisual, autoethnographic and embodied research methodologies. I am a member of the Ecological Justice Research Group and the Anti-Racist and Decolonial Pedagogies Working Group.
