(Currently on Extraordinary Leave)

Alisha Ibkar is pursuing her PhD in Applied Theatre at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, University of Manchester on SALC Fellowship. She has been awarded the Commonwealth Scholarship (2021-22) to pursue an MA in Applied Theatre from the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at University of Warwick, UK. Her doctoral research places critical theorisations around ethics and aesthetics of care in dialogue with the emerging discourse on radical performance. Engaging specifically with women-led social movements in India, she explores the significance of care in protest performances, both as a representative of human practice, as well as a form of political expression. Her work draws on the expanding body of work that connects the feminist materialist tradition of critical thinking on care with transformative ethics, politics and justice. Building on the phenomenology of care developed by prominent feminist care ethicists like Virginia Held, Sara Ruddick and Nel Noddings, the project argues that the values and practice of care existing within the domestic space can also illuminate political interactions of disenfranchised communities with the State.

She is currently associated with the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) as a the PGR Executive. She has also worked as the Coordinator of the Aligarh Chapter of the English Language Teachers' Association of India (ELTAI, an Associate of UK IATEFL).