Rishika Mehrishi

Biography

Rishika Mehrishi is assistant professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre + Dance at UC San Diego. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University’s Theater and Performance Studies department, MA from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and BA (honors) from Delhi University. Her research on more-than-human performances intersects multispecies ethnography, ecocriticism, postcolonial studies, South Asian studies, anti-caste pedagogies and activism, and performances in/from the Global South.

Her first book project "Animal Entanglements: Interspecies Performance in South Asia," explores how performances centered on animals shape contemporary discourses on caste, religion, gender, and sexuality in India and its diasporas. Her essays and reviews have been published in The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Theater Journal, Modern Drama, and Marg: A Magazine of the Arts.

Rishika is also a performance artist and makes durational art that draws heavily on everyday rituals of laboring bodies. Most recently, she conceived and performed in Out of Breath, a piece about migrant worker crises, at Stanford University.

Rishika’s expertise in archiving intersects her academic and artistic pursuits. She has worked on theater and performance based archival collections in New Delhi, New York, Abu Dhabi, and Seoul.

Education

Ph.D. - Stanford University, MA, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and New York University

B.A. - Delhi University

Office

Galbraith Hall 327