Dr. Alisha Grech is a researcher, educator, and performance practitioner who uses performance studies as a lens for understanding gender, power, and belonging. Drawing on theories of gender performativity and visibility, she examines how gender is produced and how the performance of gender shapes who is seen, believed, and protected within a society.

 

Her research examines how gender-based violence is made visible or invisible in public life. Her dissertation, Default Settings, addresses visibility, gender performativity, structural violence, and the politics of belonging. Her scholarship appears in Women's Studies Quarterly, the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, and Reshaping True Crime: Stories from the Global Margins, and has been supported by fellowships from the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, the Burstow Scholarship for Studies in Activism from the Margins, and the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative for her research. 

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The same lens informs her work in gender-based violence prevention and women's rights advocacy. If gender norms are sustained through everyday behaviour, they can also be interrupted there. Her prevention work focuses on helping communities recognize and challenge the norms that allow violence to continue.

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She brings this perspective to her current teaching and organizational work. Alongside her work consulting on team structures and programming with Kidomo Live Events, Alisha currently teaches at the University of Toronto (Scarborough campus) as a Sessional Professor. 

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Alisha holds a PhD and an MA in Performance Studies from the University of Toronto, a BAH in Drama and Philosophy from Queen's University, and a Certificate in Theatre Direction from Yale University 

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Her research interests include:

• Feminist performance art 

• Disability Theatre 

• Critical Madness Studies 

• Ethical praxis within Canadian Arts and Entertainment spaces

• Community-based research practices 

• Masculinities and male supremacism

• Applied theatre

• Institutional cultures of care