Laura Levin

Laura Levin is Associate Professor of Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies at York University; York Research Chair in Art, Technology, and Global Activism; and Director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. She teaches courses on contemporary theatre and performance art, devised theatre, and practice-based research. Her research focuses on site-specific, immersive, and urban intervention performance; performing gender and sexuality; activist and political performance; performance, human rights, and environmental justice; intermedial and digital performance; research-creation methodologies; and performance theory. She is Associate Editor of Canadian Theatre Review (former Editor-in-Chief) and Co-Editor of Performance Studies in Canada (with Marlis Schweitzer)—winner of the Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s (CATR) 2018 Patrick O’Neill Award for Best Edited Collection. She is Editor of Theatre and Performance in Toronto and Conversations Across Borders, a collection of dialogues on performance, politics, and border culture with performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña; and Editor of Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective, a book on performance art icon Jess Dobkin. Laura has also edited special issues of journals on a wide range of topics: performance art, performing politicians, performance and space, digital performance, choreographies of public assembly, and more. She is author of Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending In, winner of the CATR’s 2015 Ann Saddlemyer Book Award.

Laura has worked as a director, dramaturg, curator, and performer on artistic research projects at the intersection of political performance, site-specificity, archives, and digital media. Recent examples include performing/co-curating TALIXMXN with Jess Dobkin (Mexico City, 2019), and serving as dramaturg for Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective (AGYU, 2021) and SpiderWebShow’s VR theatre production, You Should Have Stayed Home on Toronto’s G20 protests (directed by Michael Wheeler).

Laura is Principal Investigator for Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices (2020-2027 SSHRC Partnership Grant), a project that brings together artists, scholars, and activism across Canada, the US, and Latin America to study “hemispheric performance” as a research-creation methodology, a pedagogical strategy, and a tool for social change. She also serves as Community Partnerships Lead on the CFREF grant, Connected Minds, a project addressing social impacts of AI and other disruptive technologies.