Dr. Margit Edwards, Lecturer in the Theatre Arts Program at the University of Pennsylvania, received her doctorate in Theatre and Performance at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her doctoral dissertation, titled The Village on the Stage: Dramaturgies of Modernity in African Dance (2024), is grounded in her current research interests in 20th & 21st century Africana theatre and performance, theories of coloniality and modernity, diaspora studies, and transcultural dance dramaturgy. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Dance Ethnography from UCLA and a Master of Fine Arts in Experimental Choreography from UC Riverside. In addition to her experience as an actor and director, Dr. Edwards has been a dancer and choreographer with Viver Brasil Dance Co, and an arts educator and administrator with artworxLA (The HeArt Project). She is currently a member of the collective of artists, scholars, and cultural activists that is Contours: Arte Calle. Recent publications: “Dancing Orixa Dolls/Dolls of Axé: Honoring the artistry of Dona Detinha de Xango,” in Contours: Arte Calle Edition 2: Traveling Diasporas, forthcoming October 2024, contours.lib.umn.edu; and “African Performance in the Feast of St. Francis Xavier in 17th century Luanda, Angola” in The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance (2018).
