Team & Partners
Core Team
Jr.-Prof. Dr. Leon Gabriel
Dr. Leon Gabriel is Junior Professor for Theater Studies at Ruhr University Bochum. His research focuses on performance politics, spatial arts, transnational and post-/decolonial processes in the scenic arts, on dramaturgies and artistic working methods. Monograph: Bühnen der Altermundialität. Vom Bild der Welt zur räumlichen Theaterpraxis (Neofelis, Berlin 2021, OpenAccess). His current project “Political Dramaturgy: Afterlife of the History of Violence and Asymmetrical Relations” analyses on the one hand the epistemic violence inherent to European Aesthetics and contemporary forms of art that engage with their social and environmental conditions on the other. His special interest lays on performance practices from the Andean region and Mexico as well as West and Central Africa.
university website
personal website
Balindile ka Ngcobo (M.A.)
Balindile ka Ngcobo (M.A.) is a South African performer, theatremaker and writer. She received her MA in Theatre and Performance from the University of Cape Town where, under the ‘Reimagining Tragedy for Africa and the Global South (ReTAGS)’ project, she published a thesis on ‘Mbokodofication’. As a doctoral candidate, her research interests include representational violence and its implications on postapartheid violence against women; postcolonial tropes and mythologies, as well as investigations of the Black African female body as a repository for memory. Balindile leverages Practice as Research as an epistemological and pedagogical tool to explore decolonial dramaturgical practices and emancipatory curatorial strategies.
university website
Felipe dos Santos Boquimpani (M.A.)
Felipe dos Santos Boquimpani (M.A.) is father, artist, and PhD candidate with research interest in representation theories ranging from epistemology to political theory, analysis of artistic processes and forms of work, decolonial strategies, cultural ethno-anthropology, and forms of social memory. The main research question of his PhD project “Equivocations of Decolonial Theater” focuses on how aesthetic and epistemological anti-colonial strategies are specifically developed through transnational artistic processes. As an artist himself Felipe is a trained theater director, experienced light designer, and performer.
felipe.dossantosboquimpani@rub.de
university website
personal website
Katharina Frölich (B.A.)
Katharina Frölich (she/her) studies Performance Research and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre and Media Studies. Within the project she works as a student research assistant. Her theoretical interest lies in performance politics, the limitations of representing violence, and the potential of aesthetic practices to reflect and resist extractivist and colonial logics. As a theatre and film director and performer, her current artistic work explores colonial entanglements within the history of German National Socialism.
Emily Krüper
Emily Krüper (she/her) studies Theatre Studies and Comparative Literature at Ruhr University Bochum and works as a student research assistant within the group. Her theoretical focus lies in the intersection of post/decolonial strategies, queer-feminist performance theory and the representation of marginalized bodies on stage. Her own artistic work often entails alternative approaches to knowledge distribution and questions hierarchal forms of production/reception.
Former Team Members
Stefanie Büttgenbach (M.A.)
Stefanie Büttgenbach holds a Masters Degree in theatre studies from Ruhr-University Bochum, after gaining experience in the field of theatre pedagogy, where she worked with non-professional actors. Her research interest is focused on aesthetic approaches that disrupt notions of European modernity and challenge their audience to not only perceive, but position themselves to its historical and epistemological violence. During her M.A. studies, she worked as a student research assistant within the project.
Emma Khadija Herrmann (B.A.)
Emma Khadija Herrmann (she/her) holds a Bachelor’s degree in Theater Studies and English/American Studies from Ruhr-University Bochum. During her M.A. in Performance Research, she worked as student research assistant within the project. Besides her interest in practical theater work, her theoretical focus lies on questions of performance politics surrounding the artistic examination of common colonial and anti-colonial structures. In doing so, she deals with dramaturgical motifs, the (in)visibility of marginalized bodies on stage, and imaginations of possible futures.
Key Collaborators
Especially several early career researchers have been or are in close dialogue with the research group: Prof. Dr. Mariama Diagne, Jr.-Prof. Dr. Marina Martinez-Matteo, Dr. Koku G. Nonoa, Jr.-Prof. Dr. Julia Schade, Dr. Heiko Stubenrauch, Dr. Marten Weise and Jr.-Prof. Dr. Jasmin Wrobel.
Institutional Project Partners
Besides the Institute for Theatre Studies and other research Institutes at Ruhr-University Bochum, several institutions and theatre venues collaborate with the project, among them for example:
Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt); Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft (Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen); CEDITRAA – Cultural Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation in Africa and Asia (https://ceditraa.net/); ERC Consolidator Grant Project “Minor Universality. Narrative World Production After Western Universalism”, Universität des Saarlandes.
Favoriten Festival (Dortmund), Theater im Depot (Dortmund), Theater Dortmund, PRT Bochum, Schauspielhaus Bochum, PACT Zollverein (Essen), Ringlokschuppen Ruhr (Mülheim an der Ruhr), tanzhaus nrw (Düsseldorf), FFT Düsseldorf, Festival Impulse, Freies Werkstatt Theater (Köln), AfriCologne Festival (Köln), studiobühne Köln, Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt), Ballhaus Naunynstrasse (Berlin).
Artists and Researchers that have collaborated with the research group so far
Nora Amin, Darija Davidović, Martine Dennewald, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi & Marcella Akuetteh Nuerkie, Bâtir le Commun (Becky Beh, Johanna-Yasirra Kluhs, Champleins Ludovic Ngahenou, Rodriguez Tankoua), Martine Dennewald, Deufert&Plischke/Collective Rona, Frieda Ekotto, Christine Eyene, Compagnie La Fleur, Mark Fleishman, Cecilia Nuria Gil Mariño, Anke Graneß, Martina Groß, Nicole Haitzinger, Karin Harrasser, Julius Heinicke, Mwenya Kabwe, Grit Koeppen, Daniel Kötter, Bojana Kunst, Pedzisai Maedza, Mapa Teatro, Walther Maradiegue, Dorothée Munyaneza, Nikolaus Müller-Schöll, Melibea Obono, Théâtre OTHNI (Martin Ambara), Jay Pather, José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo, Katharina Pelosi, Davi Pontes & Wallace Ferreira, Anna Ptak, María Esperanza Rock-Nuñez, Diana Rojas-Feile, Rika Sakalak, Idylla Silmarovi, Mariana Simoni, Compagnie Zora Snake, Ruth Sonderegger, Édith Nana Voges Tchuinang, Sandra Umathum, meLê Yamomo.
And of course: Our colleagues from Ruhr-University, especially from the whole department for philologies.