معرفی
Alice Baldock is the Okinaga Junior Research Fellow in Japanese Studies at Wadham College, University of Oxford, a position she holds from 2023 to 2026. Her academic work is situated within the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, specializing in the Department of Japanese Studies. Her research bridges historical scholarship with performance practice, focusing on the cultural and intellectual history of the body in 20th-century Japan.
Her research interests center on 20th-century Japanese history, gender in postwar Japan, and the transnational circulation of ideas about the body. She explores how dancers and intellectuals redefined concepts like nikutai (flesh body) to challenge social hierarchies of gender, class, and ability. Her work emphasizes how embodied practices such as butoh offered alternative modes of existence in a rapidly codified and consumerist society. She is particularly interested in how these ideas gained popularity in Japan and spread globally.
The themes in her recent publications reflect a strong interdisciplinary focus, combining history, gender studies, performance theory, and cultural analysis. Her work traces the intellectual legacy of dancers and bodily practices, examining how embodiment becomes a site of resistance and knowledge production. The articles show a consistent engagement with postwar Japanese identity, feminist reinterpretations of the body, and the globalization of aesthetic philosophies.
Alice is actively involved in integrating the humanities with the performing arts. She co-organized the international conference Missing Bodies, Missing Voices: Ordinary Lives and the Reframing of Postwar Japan at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and has collaborated with butoh companies such as Café Reason and Mutekisha. Her creative practice includes performances in Yume no yume, oku no oku, nokori no hi and Kokkyounaki Karada, as well as participation in UK-based artist residencies. These initiatives reflect her commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue and scholar-practitioner collaboration.
