Ahalya Satkunaratnam

Biography

Ahalya is a dance scholar and dancer who joined Quest in 2014. Her broader teaching and research interests are in cultural studies, specifically the relationships between aesthetics, embodied forms, and local and global politics. She earned her BA in Political Science at Loyola University Chicago and her PhD in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Ahalya is completing a manuscript on women’s arts practice in Sri Lanka during the 26-year civil war. This ethnographic text considers how dance practice makes and undoes local and state nationalisms, the intersections of gender and ethnicity with cultural practice, and the personal experiences of war. Prior to joining Quest, she started new research on post-war reconciliation and international diplomacy through the arts as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow of the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has taught in a wide range of institutions and departments, which mirror her leanings towards interdisciplinary research, teaching and learning.

Research Interest

Cultural studies