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Esra Cizmeci
Dr Esra Cizmeci is a theatre and performance studies scholar and an ethnographer who works at the intersection of anthropology, theatre and performance studies, and her areas of expertise include performance in the everyday, performance for actors and non-actors, performance theory and ethnographic methods, the study of minority cultures, performance and religion as well as community performance. Esra received BA in theatre, MFA in acting, and MA in theatre history and criticism before she completed her Ph.D. in drama, theatre and performance studies at Roehampton University with the support of the full Sacred Heart Scholarship. Based on field research carried out over a three-year period, Esra completed her dissertation on Sufi religious space production and generation of Sufi living in contemporary Turkey. Esra also worked as a Teaching Artist with Women’s Project and Vital Theatre Company through which she taught students of diverse populations in NYC Public Schools. Also, she worked with entrepreneurs teaching them how to achieve stage presence in their everyday work environments as they interact with individuals at the business meetings and presentations. Esra received Buchwald Fellowship from CUNY Brooklyn College to research Tiyatro Boyali Kus¸ , a Turkish Theatre Company and their use of Theatre of the Oppressed techniques in Turkey. She worked with LOTOS Collective of United Kingdom to collaborate on Triangulated City, a Live Art performance project in Beirut with Zoukak Theatre Company & Cultural Association of Lebanon. Esra’s chapter on performing Sufism in Turkey is published in an edited volume Performing Religion in Public. Currently, Esra works as an associate professsor at Istanbul Aydın University, creates workshop projects to empower young communities in their struggle for social change while she produces her first book project on Sufism and performance in Turkey.