معرفی
Professor Sarahleigh Castelyn is an educator, researcher, performer, and choreographer specializing in dance, currently serving as a Professor and Postgraduate Research Degree Leader in the Department of Music, Writing & Performance within the School of Arts and Creative Industries at the University of East London. Born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa in the 1970s, she has developed an international career bridging the United Kingdom and South Africa, with deep expertise in South African contemporary dance practices and their political dimensions.
Her research interests focus on the intersection of dance with critical social issues including race, gender, sexuality, nation, and politics in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. She explores the politics of hybridity and the use of practice as research methodology, with particular attention to marginalized dance practices from the Global South. Recent work has examined the representation of women and madness in performance, as well as the toyi-toyi as a powerful political dance motif in South African protest culture.
Castelyn's scholarly output demonstrates consistent engagement with contemporary South African dance, examining how dancing bodies become sites of political resistance and identity formation. Her publications reveal evolving interests from early work on HIV/AIDS representation in dance (2008-2010) to more recent explorations of xenophobia, disability, and decolonial approaches to Western dance forms. Her 2022 monograph Contemporary Dance in South Africa: The Toyi-Toying Body represents a significant contribution to the field.
She actively serves on numerous editorial and organizational boards including the South African Dance Journal, HOTFOOT, Research in Dance Education, and the African Theatre Association. Her commitment to mentoring is evident through her supervision of PhD students and leadership of the JOMBA! KHULUMA writing residency project that connects students from UEL with those from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.
Castelyn has secured substantial research funding from multiple sources including UEL's ACI Research Support Fund, UEL Undergraduate Research Intern Scheme, and previously the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council for her doctoral work. Her ongoing projects include research on representations of women and madness, feminist theatre collaborations, and an edited collection on contemporary dance in Africa.
