Dr. Asif Majid is a theatre researcher, educator, maker, and consultant who scripts, stages, and traces local and global nodes of history, power, performance, race, and (de)coloniality, particularly by attending to the intersection of Islam and performance; devising community-based participatory theatre; and making improvisational music.  Currently, he is assistant professor of theatre and human rights at the University of Connecticut where he is also affiliate faculty in anthropology; Asian and Asian American studies; interdisciplinary indigeneity, race, ethnicity, and politics; and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.  He received his PhD in anthropology, media, and performance from The University of Manchester and his work has been funded by organizations like the Fulbright Commission, the Wallace Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Mellon Foundation, the Open Society Foundation, and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.  

Dr. Majid has served as an Arts Research with Communities of Color Fellow, Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow, and Lab Fellow.  He has also published in numerous journals  like The Drama Review, Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, and Contemporary Theatre Review.  His performance credits include association with The Kennedy Center and the Royal Exchange Theatre.  His book, Making Muslimness: Race, Religion, and Performance in Contemporary Manchester, is forthcoming with Routledge in 2025.  He can be found online at www.asifmajid.com.

Muharram commemorations of the death of Hussein ibn Ali – Shi’a Muslims’ third imam and Prophet Muhammad’s grandson – in Lucknow and Hyderabad represent India’s largest iterations of the world’s biggest, transnational, annual, public mourning ritual.  In his Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Majid is conducting a performance-based study of Muharram processions and poetry via participant observations, interviews, and autoethnography to examine how these practices make, unmake, and remake Indian transreligious harmony.  This research will result in scholarly/public essays and a book project involving: Shi’a, Sufi, and Hindu studies and performance studies; Muharram studies in the under-researched Indian context; and transnational comparisons of Muharram within Indian disaporas.