• 2023 Postdoctoral Fellow at Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh (UK)
• 2017- 2023 PhD in Choreography, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh (UK)
• 2014-2016 Visiting Scholar and adjunct lecturer, Brown University (US)
• 2008-2009 MA degree in literary translation, Higher School for Linguistic Mediators of Vicenza (Italy)
• 2004-2008 BA degree in Linguistic and Cultural Mediation, University for Foreigners of Siena (Italy)

As a scholar and dance artist, Saleh’s research focuses on self-discovery, narrative appropriation, and bodily archives as a form of a decolonial practice. In her practice-based research The Archive of Gestures she intertwines choreography, video installation and spoken word to unearth hidden narratives of the Palestinian history and construct a living archive of gestures. She also experiments with participatory performance to disseminate the bodily archives she unearths, making them accessible to others, and reflecting on who can create, own, and access archives within the Palestinian colonial context.

Her performances were presented venues and festivals in the Arab World, Europe and the US, such as Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival, Dance International Glasgow, Fruitmarket Gallery, Somerset House, Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, Granoff Center, New York Live Arts, Veem House, Avignon Festival, Hebbel am Ufer, Edinburgh International Festival and Alserkal Avenue.

Saleh’s new research project focuses on decolonial embodied practices at the university and how these practices can be integrated in the teaching and become part of the drive to decolonise the university and its curriculum. Saleh aims to engage with Glasgow University archives and monuments of colonial/slavery significance and to explore with the students participatory and creative ways of responding to these archives and monuments through public and participatory artistic interventions and performances. The objective is to create debate around them and make collective decisions on their future status at the university.

Research areas

• Decolonial embodied practices
• The body as archive
• Participatory performance
• Digital and hybrid performance
• Practice as research methods

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The World We Share

Farah Saleh and collaborators will research and develop The World We Share – a multi-generational performance that explores themes of a ‘diverse society’ with a multi-generational audience. The World We Share investigates the complex constellations of people and lived experiences, specifically focusing on

individual and collective problems related to authority, racism, ableism and ageism and looking for ways of resolving these problems through collaborative practices amongst the performers and participatory actions with the audience. The project is funded by Creative Scotland and in partnership with Imaginate, Lyra, Dance Base, Assembly Roxy, Tramway and Platform. The performances will take place in Edinburgh and Glasgow in October 2024.

Balfour Reparations (2024-2044)

In this performance lecture I will investigate ways of confronting the United Kingdom’s colonial legacy in Palestine. In particular, the role of Arthur James Balfour, the country’s Prime Minister (1902-1905) and Foreign Secretary (1916-1919), in the historical denial of Palestinian political rights in their homeland. I will do that through elements of Critical Fabulation and Afrofuturism that combine history, fiction and fantasy, while engaging with and being inspired by archival material, such as videos, photos, and documents. The performance lecture will take place in 2044 to reflect on the fictive apology letter that the United Kingdom will have issued in 2024 to the Palestinian people promising them reparations. The audience will become members of the reparations’ evaluation committee created on the 20th anniversary of the apology and will be invited to participate in the performance. The performance is a commission by Culture& and will be premiered in The Queen’s House in Greenwich in September 2024.

I welcome PhD proposals in the following areas:

• Global Majority Performance
• Choreography
• Decolonial practices
• Political Performance
• Participatory and digital performance

I teach across levels and contribute to several courses, current teaching includes:

• Theare and Society (Level 1)
• Thinking Through Theatre Histories (Level 2)
• Thinking Through Theatre Marking (Level 2)
• Advanced Theatre Making (Hons)
• Postcolonial Encounters (Hons)
• Honours Dissertations
• Contemporary Devising (Masters)
• Contemporary Dramaturgical Practice (Masters)
• Masters Dissertations

Website www.farahsaleh.com

Publications

Journals

• 2021 "Defying Distance. Media, Bodily Archives, and Refugeehood", IMG journal, Issue 3: 367-379.
• 2021 "Gesturing Refugees: Participation, Affect, then Action?". H-ART. Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte, no. 8 (2021): 63-88.
• 2017 "Archiving Gestures of Disobedience," Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 17, Issue 1: 143-146.

Book chapters

• 2024 (forthcoming) “Bodily Archives and Remediation: PAST-inuous,” in M. Moralli (Ed) Migration and Artivisim (Edward Elgar Publishing): 202-206.
• 2023 "Gestural Archives: Transmission and Embodiment as Translation," in A. Ganguly and K. Gotman (Eds.) Performance and Translation in a Global Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 341-367.
• 2020 "Why art, why now, why ever?", in Kaatje De Geest, Carmen Hornbostel and Milo Rau) (Eds.), Why Theatre (NTgent: Ghent): 282-283.
• 2019 "Unbordering Gestures," in S. Noeth and A. Niemann (Eds.) What does it take to cross a border? (Berlin: Untie to Tie): 28-31.
• 2016 "Cells of Illegal Education", in S. Noeth (Ed.) Bodies of Evidence: a reader (Stockholm: University of the Arts): 64-68.