Dr Sharanya Murali
Senior Lecturer in Theatre

Research area(s)

Feminist theory; women's writing practices; performance art and visual cultures; South Asian performance; critical theory; urban performance; memory studies; anthropology of violence.

Research Interests

​For a significant portion of my research life, I have worked on South Asian urban cultures of performance, specifically walking as performance-ethnography, and New Delhi. My evolving interest in this area surrounds decolonial possibilities of walking art, and in the relationship between Situationist practices and race.

My current longterm project examines the genealogy of South Asian feminist performance art against imperial and communal legacies. I am currently writing a monograph on the gendered technologies of risk and labour in contemporary Indian photo-performance. I am interested in variants of intermedial performance practices undertaken and created by women and women-identifying performers. As part of this, I am examining the politics of ingestion in Indian performance art.

Project details

Invited participant at the Harvard Mellon School of Theatre and Performance 2021: The State of the Field, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Harvard English Department's Spencer Fund, and Theater, Dance & Media.