Sandra Ruiz

Sandra Ruiz is the Sue Divan Associate Professor of Performance Studies and Conrad Humanities Scholar (2021–2026) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. She holds affiliate appointments in Gender and Women’s Studies, Asian American Studies, and the Program in Comparative and World Literature. Her research bridges Performance Studies, Puerto Rican Studies, Latinx Studies, and queer theory, focusing on anticolonial aesthetics, minoritarian futurisms, and the intersections of race, gender, and cultural temporality.

Dr. Ruiz earned a Ph.D. and MA in Performance Studies from New York University, along with a BA in English Language & Literature from the University of Chicago. Her work has been recognized through fellowships including the HRI Fellowship (2021–2022), Helen Corley Petit Scholarship (2020–2021), and the Michael Kirby Memorial Dissertation Prize (2011).

Her scholarship spans books like Ricanness: Enduring Time In Anticolonial Performance (2019) and Left Turns in Brown Study (2024), exploring themes of decolonial aesthetics, Brown existentialism, and minoritarian grief-work. Recent projects include Formless Formation: Vignettes for the End of this World (2021), which critiques capitalist temporality through avant-garde performance.

• Key Awards: Conrad Humanities Scholar, HRI Fellow, Michael Kirby Memorial Prize
• Teaching: Courses on minoritarian aesthetics, Latinx dramatists, and queer existentialisms
• Research Networks: Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory Fellow (2016–2018)

Her work interrogates how marginalized communities reimagine futurity through performance, blending continental philosophy with ethnographic critique to challenge colonial and capitalist structures.