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PhD Students and Candidates

PhD students and candidates based at UC San Diego are part of a joint PhD program with UC Irvine. As part of the joint program, Theatre and Dance PhDs teach and receive funding from UC San Diego, but are able to take courses at either institution. Click on the profiles below to read more about each student/candidate. To learn more about UC San Diego's Joint PhD Program with UC Irvine, visit the PhD Program page.

 

  • Oreoluwa Ayoola

    Oreoluwa Ayoola

    First-year PhD student with research focus in African and African American performance, with particular attention to colorism, Black feminism, and the representation of Black women in theatre and performance. 
  • Haïa R’nana Bchiri

    Haïa R’nana Bchiri

    Sixth-year PhD student with research focus in Ancient Mediterranean performance, female power and patriarchal historiography in the ancient world, gender and performances of power, early modern theatre and politics, and performances of divinity.
  • Emma Clarke

    Emma Clarke

    Fourth-year PhD candidate with research focus in performance, dance, film, American, and cultural studies, along with feminist theory. Her dissertation examines the choreography and corporeality of female archetypal characters of mid-twentieth century American Westerns on screen and in live performance.
  • Yuxin Guo

    Yuxin Guo

    First-year PhD student with research focus on how contemporary Sino-language theatre and performance in China express collective memory, trauma, and resistance, and how Chinese audiences creatively engage with politics in the public sphere through theatre and performance. Her broader interests span class, gender, sexuality, and LGBTQIA+ identities in Sino-language societies, examined through ethnography.
  • Bosong Kim

    Bosong Kim

    Sixth-year PhD student with research focus in representations of tradition in dance performances, theorization of the body as a material heritage, culture and body as commodity and spectacle, working at the intersection of Dance/Performance studies, Cultural studies, Postcolonial studies, and Korean studies.
  • Kristin Leadbetter

    Kristin Leadbetter

    Ninth-year PhD candidate with research focus in Acting theory, acting pedagogy, communication theory, and applied theatre.
  • Jazmine Simone Logan

    Jazmine Simone Logan

    Fifth-year PhD student with research focus in African theater, African American theater, Afrocentricity, race and performance in theater pedagogy, cultural competency, critical race theory, and social justice work in theater education.
  • Nic Rodriguez Villafañe

    Nic Rodriguez Villafañe

    Fourth-year PhD student with research focus in phenomenological impacts of diaspora Boricua and Afro Caribbean performance arts.