Nazli Akhtari (she/her) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. Her interdisciplinary research draws from theatre and performance studies, diaspora and cultural studies, and feminist media studies. Her teaching and praxis centre questions of collective memory and affect in performance, archive, and popular culture and media. Prior to joining the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, Nazli was a visiting Assistant Professor of English and Drama at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She has published in the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Global Performance Studies, Performance Matters, Mise-en-scène, and Imagined Theatres. Other essays are forthcoming with Camera Obscura and Iran Namag.
The impact of Nazli’s research and praxis on understandings of the intersections between performance, media, and diaspora has been recognized by several national and international fellowships and awards including a Research Fellowship from the American Society for Theatre Research (2021) and an honorary mention for the Richard Plant Award for best article in English on a topic in Canadian theatre and performance studies in 2022, among others.
Nazli holds a PhD (2021) in Theatre and Performance Studies with a Collaborative Specialization in Knowledge Media Design (KMD) from the University of Toronto and a BFA (2013) from Simon Fraser University. Before coming to Canada, Nazli studied in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Tehran.
