Laura Levin
Laura Levin is associate professor of Theatre and Performance at York University, York Research Chair in Art, Technology, and Global Activism, and director of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. Levin is Principal Investigator of Hemispheric Encounters Network (HEN), a SSHRC Partnership Grant exploring performance’s potential for addressing shared human rights and environmental justice issues across the Americas (hemisphericencounters.ca). She co-facilitated with Tracy Tidgwell a partnership between HEN and the Queer Summer Institute, helping to bring students from across the Americas to Toronto to participate in activities as a partnered field school, and co-organizing events such as a panel on transnational methodologies, a workshop by Professor Vanessa Andreotti, an artist-scholar networking event, and performance by Colombian performance artist Nadia Granados.
Levin has published numerous articles and journal issues on site-specific, digital, and political performance; is former Editor-in-Chief of Canadian Theatre Review; and author of award-winning books Performance Studies in Canada (2018, with Marlis Schweitzer) and Performing Ground: Space, Camouflage, and the Art of Blending (2014), the latter exploring activist approaches to space in performance by women and artists from marginalized communities. She is Editor of Theatre and Performance in Toronto (2011), Conversations Across Borders (2011), and a book on queer feminist performance art icon Jess Dobkin (Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective), forthcoming in Fall 2024.
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). She also serves as Community Partnerships Lead on the CFREF grant, Connected Minds, a project addressing social impacts of AI and other disruptive technologies.
