As a scholar and director, I ask: how did children become main characters in the grand drama of contemporary displacement? And what might their performances teach us about borders, belonging, and the world they will inherit?
I am currently working on my first book — provisionally titled The Child at the Border: How Children Perform Displacement — which rests at the intersections of performance studies, critical refugee studies, and childhood studies. My writing has appeared in Performance Research, Studies in South Asian Film & Media, Women’s Studies, Theatre Journal (also discussed in the On TAP podcast), and is forthcoming in Theatre Topics.
In the classroom, I bring a global, relational lens to questions of representation and power. I am currently devising a new course that draws on my research, titled Playing at the Border: Migration and Art, which you can read more about here.
I completed my PhD in Theater and Performance Studies, with minors in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, at Stanford University. My BA in History and Film is from Cornell University, and I have studied acting with Barry John in Bombay and at the Stella Adler Studio in New York.