Sruti Bala is Associate Professor at the Dept. of Theatre Studies of the University of Amsterdam, where she currently co-ordinates the MA Theatre Studies programme. She is affiliated to the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis and is a member of the ASCA advisory board.
Sruti's research interests are at the intersections of performance and politics, which has taken shape in specific research projects on nonviolent protest, participatory art, artistic activism, feminist and postcolonial/decolonial literary and cultural theories and translation.
She co-ordinates a five-year NWO-funded research project in co-operation with the University of Curaçao on the cultural practices of citizenship in the Dutch Caribbean. See project website here.
She is an active member of the collective International Solidarity for Academic Freedom in India (InSAF India).
Sruti studies Indian percussion (Tabla) with Niti Ranjan Biswas.
The five-year research project "Cultural Practices of Citizenship under Conditions of Fragmented Sovereignty: Gendered and Sexual Citizenship in Curaçao and Bonaire" (funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO) in partnership with the University of Curaçao will investigate how citizenship is practiced under conditions of fragmented national sovereignty. Departing from the recognition that citizenship is not only a legal status legal status based on (birth)-rights and filial duties, but equally a notion tied to the histories of the nation-state, its claims to modernity, and its legacies of colonialism, slavery, and gender inequalities, the project examines citizenship in Curaçao and Bonaire in terms of practices and incipient struggles for political subjectivity. It asks how citizenship is practiced and culturally articulated by subjects facing multiple forms of systemic inequalities. The proposed research consists of two multi-disciplinary doctoral projects on citizenship in relation to sexual minorities and gender relations respectively.
For updates, see our Project Website
Florence Evans: Art, Activism, and Memory in Buenos Aires, 1995-2003 (co-promoter: Dr. Boris Noordenbos)
Julia Mullié: at this moment stanley brouwn is at the distance of x feet from this point (promoter: Prof. Dr. Margriet Schavemaker)
Emily Shin-Jie Lee: Artist-in-Residencies: Dwelling Spaces of Art and Politics (promoter: Prof. Dr. Margriet Schavemaker)
Ariane Gros: From the 19th Century August to the Contemporary Joker: The Cultural Figure of the Clown and its Political Significance in Arts, Media and Public Space(s) (co-promoters: Prof. Dr. Peter Marx and Prof. Dr. Stephen Packard, University of Cologne)
Aronnette Martis (University of Curaçao): Dance and Citizenship in the Dutch Caribbean
(promoter: Prof. Dr. Rose Mary Allen, co-promoter: Prof. Dr. Liesbeth Echteld) - part of NWO-funded project
Hari Prasad A. Sacré (University of Ghent): Decolonial and Intersectional Art Education in Belgium
(promoter: Prof. Dr. Kris Rutten)