María Regina Firmino-Castillo

María Regina Firmino-Castillo serves as Assistant Professor in the Department of Dance at the University of California, Riverside, where she teaches graduate seminars and undergraduate courses centered on transdisciplinary and anticolonial approaches to bodily studies. Her academic home situates her at the intersection of performance practices, critical theory, and decolonial methodologies within a major research university context.

Her educational background includes a PhD in Transdisciplinary Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies and doctoral training in Cultural Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. This dual foundation enables her unique epistemological approach that interrogates disciplinary boundaries while focusing on the transcorporeal body as a site of ontological production and resistance against colonial power structures.

Firmino-Castillo's research centers on the transcorporeal body within contexts of coloniality, genocide, and 21st-century necropolitics, with particular focus on Mesoamerican communities. Her work bridges critical theory with embodied practice through collaborations with Ixil knowledge-holders in Guatemala, Be'ena'Za'a (Zapotec) artists in México, and interdisciplinary collectives across the Americas. Key thematic threads include ontological regeneration after genocide, paradoxical performance against necropower, crepuscular bodily politics, and pluriversal knowledge systems that challenge colonial taxonomies. Her methodology consistently integrates scholarly research with performance practice as vehicles for onto-corporeal investigation.

Her scholarly output demonstrates consistent engagement with critical dance studies, indigenous performance, and decolonial theory across journals like Dance Research Journal, Transmotion, and Imaginations, with recent works exploring Xibalbá mythology, ouroboric theory, and transmotions across colonial borders. The trajectory shows deepening theoretical sophistication while maintaining commitment to community-based knowledge production.

• National Science Foundation Fellowship (Anthropology)
• University of California Regents Fellowship
• Mellon Humanities Quarterly Fellowship at UCR's Center for Ideas and Society
• Institute for Citizens and Scholars Support

As an educator, Firmino-Castillo mentors MFA and PhD students in Experimental Choreography and Critical Dance Studies, while serving on committees for anthropology, Hispanic studies, and ethnomusicology students. She participates in UCR's Designated Emphasis in Corporeality and Embodiment Studies and the undergraduate Designated Emphasis in Medical Humanities. Her collaborative work extends to the Health Humanities and Disability Justice Lab at UC Riverside and the UCHRI faculty working group 'Fostering Collective Care and Repair: Critical Central American Studies Research and Pedagogical Praxis as Resistance,' where she develops community-engaged research frameworks centered on repair after state violence.