Meet our Students
Meet our current PhD in Performance Studies candidates and learn about their areas of research.
Christian Albarran
Pronouns: he/him
PhD Performance Studies
Christian is an interdisciplinary theatre practitioner combining academic work and practical Artistic director from Mexico. He established Troy Theatre Productions in 2020, since then he actively works as producer, director and actor in Mexico and in Canada.
He holds an MA in Theatre and Performance Studies from York University and an MA in Hispanic and Latin American Culture and Production from University of Toronto.
He is pursuing his PhD degree in Performance Studies at University of Alberta. His research interests include violence, trauma and vulnerable memory of the body in marginalized communities mainly LGBTQ2+ in Mexico.
Aksam Alyousef
Pronouns: he/him
PhD Performance Studies
Aksam Alyousef is a seasoned playwright, director, and producer with extensive experience in both theatre and television. He holds an MA in Drama from the University of Alberta and is currently pursuing his PhD in Drama at the same institution. A graduate of the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus (1994), Alyousef launched his career as an assistant professor and journalist, contributing to the academic and cultural landscape in Syria.
In 2001, he relocated to Qatar, where he worked as a drama teacher before joining Al Jazeera Children’s Channel as a scriptwriter and producer, shaping content for a new generation of viewers. After moving to Canada in 2016, Alyousef continued to build his reputation as a theatre creator. Since then, he has written and directed many new plays, including Honey and Nuts, Souls, Hagar, F.O.B., and Adeeb. Notably, Adeeb was honoured as Best Play by the Arab Theatre Institution in 2022.
Lyudmyla Honcharova
Pronouns: she/her
PhD Performance Studies
Lyudmyla Honcharova performer, theatre-maker from Ukraine that works internationally and in different styles and genres. In her works, she strives to break boundaries and explores new forms and means of theatre expressiveness. She is a performer at Subpoetic International. Lyudmyla is a co-founder of the Public Organization Neoteric Institute of Acting, Lviv, Ukraine. Also, she is researcher and actor training instructor. Her last research project was in Sri Lanka where she explored the Sri Lankan Martial Art Angampora and actor training. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on South Asian Martial Arts and actor training methodologies. Lyudmyla received her MA in Acting Degree from Institute of the Arts Barcelona (Liverpool John Moores University) and MPhil Degree from University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo. Also, she has BA in Acting Degree from Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine.
Sarah Jackson
Pronouns: she/her
PhD Performance Studies
Sarah Jackson is a PhD student in the third year of her Performance Studies program at the University of Alberta, and the recipient of a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. Her research encompasses visual culture, gender and performance, burlesque, archival practices, and feminist theory. She is a designer with a master’s degree in visual design and an award-winning and internationally acclaimed burlesque performer. Her PhD research investigates often-overlooked and discarded performative moments of women’s stage acts in the music-halls of London. Specifically, she will be exploring British illustrator Dudley Hardy’s Gaiety Girl posters (ca.1893-1899) through a post-structural semiotic analysis of archival resources, historiographical discourse, and contemporary burlesque performance, drawing on feminist theory throughout.
She has won four awards from the most prestigious burlesque competition in the world – the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas – including “Most Dazzling” and “Most Classic” in 2024, and 2nd Runner-Up M-Exotic World in 2025, making her the current reigning Duchess of Burlesque! A performer, choreographer, researcher, and producer, she thrives in the arena of live theatrical cabaret creation. Her most recent creation is The Two Coupe Society.
Photo credit: Brendan Roy Photography
Zhuohao Li
Pronouns: she/her
PhD Performance Studies
Zhuohao Li is a dramaturg, performer, calligraphy practitioner, and Chinese–English translator. She is a PhD candidate in Performance and Theatre Studies in the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta. Her research investigates the saturation of Lyricism in Chinese calligraphy and contemporary dance in terms of performers’ training methods, choreography, and mise en scène. Under the umbrella of Lyric Aesthetics, she is exploring the interconnectedness between ideogram writing, image, emotion, and body movement. She also works as a Co-editor-in-chief of Intonations, an interdisciplinary online journal run by the graduate students in the Faculty of Arts.
Liam Monaghan
Pronouns: he/him
PhD Performance Studies
Liam Monaghan is a writer, theatre artist, emerging scholar, and educator. His proposed doctoral dissertation is an innovative history of architecture and performance in Canada from the late 19th- to mid-20th-century. More broadly, his interests include playwriting, dramaturgy, and new play creation; fin-de-siècle and modern theatre and drama; queer cultural history; critical and cultural theory; and research-creation methods. He has been awarded a Canada Graduate Research Scholarship—Doctoral by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2026—29), among other awards.
Liam’s plays have been performed in festivals and theatres across Canada and his essays have appeared in publications including Canadian Theatre Review, HowlRound Theatre Commons, and Alberta Views. His current artistic project is The Light of Other Skies, an adaptation of the lives of architect Arthur Erickson and his partner, interior designer Francisco Kripacz. It will be produced by Liam’s indie arts company, Memory Box Theatre, in Spring 2027. Strange/Familiar, Liam’s autofictional play on the themes of adoption, family, and queer belonging, was awarded the Sharon Pollock Prize by Alberta Playwrights' Network, and his artistic work has been funded by the Edmonton Arts Council and Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Liam has an established career as an educator, spanning youth community teaching, sessional instruction, and over six years of full-time experience as a postsecondary writing centre specialist and instructional designer at various institutions. He holds a B.A. (Hons.) and M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in Theatre Practice.
(Photograph by Zachary Ayotte.)
Thea Patterson
Pronouns: she/her
PhD Performance Studies
Thea Patterson, is a choreographer, performer, dramaturge, and researcher currently based in Tiohti:áke/Montreal. Her practice revolves around an acute set of questions around the nature of objecthood, perception, vitality, and time. She has Masters from DAS Choreography (Amsterdam 2016) and is PhD candidate in Performance Studies at the University of Alberta where she was Co-editor-in-chief of Intonations, an online Graduate run journal from 2019-2021.
Her work Silvering (2020) was presented at Mile Zero Dance (MZD) in Edmonton as one of the first live ZOOM shows of the pandemic and her work Un-nevering, was presented in 2025 at the Festival Transamerique (FTA) in Montreal and at MZD.
Abigail ‘Ameley’ Quaye
Pronouns: she/her
PhD Performance Studies
Abigail Ameley Quaye is a Ghanaian Theatre Artist nurtured by her grandmother in a town called Tema. Her first degree was at the School of Performing Arts in the University of Ghana with a major in Theatre Arts and a minor in Music.
In 2015, Ameley developed an affinity to unconventional writing methodologies such as Automatic writing. She pursued an MFA in the same university where she conducted research on Automatic Writing and unconventional writing methodologies. In September 2016, she came to University of Guelph for an exchange program where she had the rare opportunity of being mentored by playwright Judy Thompson. Ameley believes in the creative fluidity and leverage that plays lend to exploring stereotypes and experimenting with methods of social change through dialogue. Thus, her creativity leans towards enhancing the effectiveness of creative works in challenging status-quo, social reforms and enhancing positive political action. Questions surrounding the effectiveness of creativity led her to pursue another master’s degree in Gender and Social Justice in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department here at University of Alberta with a research focus on decolonised data representation methodologies.
She is currently a PhD student in Performance Studies in the Drama Department. She is being supervised and mentored by Prof. Stefano Muneroni. Her current research focus is on Women and negotiated performance spaces through the lens of postcolonial resistance. She locates her works within Afrocentric paradigms, indigenous philosophies and pedagogies, postcolonial politics, and decolonial thoughts.
Photo credit: Joseph Livingstone Koduah
Brandon Shalansky
Pronouns: he/him
PhD Performance Studies
Brandon is a theatre, film, and media researcher specializing in horror studies and metamodernism. He is currently working on his PhD at the University of Alberta, studying the intersections of horror and performance.