Professor Royona Mitra
Associate PVC (EDI) / Professor - Dance and Performance Cultures

Summary

Royona Mitra (she/her) is Professor in Dance and Performance Cultures and the author of Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism (Palgrave, May 2015). Her first monograph was awarded the 2017 de la Torre Bueno First Book Award by the Dance Studies Association (DSA) and it was runner-up for the 2016 New Career Research in Theatre/Performance awarded by the Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA).

Her forthcoming monograph Unmaking Contact: Choreographing South Asian Touch is in press and due for publication in spring 2025 with Oxford University Press. The monograph's conceptual premise was published in an article titled "Unmaking Contact: Choreographic Touch at the Intersections of Race, Caste and Gender", and was awarded Dance Studies Association's Gertrude Lippincott Award in 2022 for the Best English Language Journal Article.

Royona's co-edited journal special issue titled "Outing Archives/Archives Outing" for Contemporary Theatre Review journal, alongside Profs Bryce Lease and Melissa Blanco Borelli, was awarded the Theatre and Performance Research Association's Edited Collection Prize in 2022.

Prior to joining the Theatre Department at Brunel in 2013, Royona was a Senior Lecturer in the Drama Department at University of Wolverhampton where she was also the MA Drama Course Leader. She has also taught in the Theatre and Performance Department at the University of Plymouth.

Royona served as a member on the REF2021 Sub Panel 33 (2018-2022). She is Co-Chair of the Theatre and Performance Research Association (2022- ) alongside Dr Broderick Chow. She was elected as Secretary to join the Executive Committee for SCUDD (Standing Conference for University Drama Department) from 2013-2016. She was also an elected member of DSA’s (Dance Studies Association) Board of Directors (2018-2022), and a Working Group Convenor for the Bodies and Performance WG of TaPRA (2015-2018). She has served on the editorial board for DSA's Studies in Dance History series (2015-2018), was a co-editor for the Training Grounds section of Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal (2015-2018), and is on the editorial board for Contemporary Theatre Review. 

Qualifications

Royona has a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London (2011) that conceptualised the "new intercultyralism" of the British-Bangladeshi dance-artist Akram Khan, an MA in Physical Theatre from Royal Holloway, University of London (2001) and a BA (Hons) in Theatre & Performance from the University of Plymouth (2000). She trained in South Asian dance styles in India and specialised in physical theatre in the UK. 

Royona also has qualified status as a Fellow of the Higher Education (FHEA) UK.

Responsibility

Royona is Associate Pro Vice Chancellor, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (2024 - ). She was Associate Dean (Equality and Diversity: Staff) of CBASS (2022 - 2024), Associate Dean (Equality & Diversity) of CBASS (2020-2021) and the Equality and Diversity Working Group Lead for CBASS (2019-2020). 

She chairs the university's Equity Steering Group, the Anti-Racism Steering Group, and the joint SAT team for Athena Swan and Race Equality Charter.

She has also served as Programme Leader for Theatre (2017-2019), and Admissions Tutor for Theatre (2014-2017).