Dr. Cihan Erdal has been awarded a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship

Dr. Cihan Erdal has been awarded a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship for 2026–2028, and will be joining the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies (CDTPS) at the University of Toronto as a Postdoctoral Fellow.

Dr. Erdal will undertake a new research project titled “Choreographing Radical Hope: The Arts as Political Response in Nihilistic Times” as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the CDTPS at the University of Toronto, working with Professor Kathleen Gallagher.

My postdoctoral research focuses on the lived worlds of young artists, including dancers, choreographers, body percussionists, musicians, drag performers, theatre-makers, video and installation artists, whose creative-political engagements are explicitly shaped in resistance to the moral and political offensives of authoritarian populism, nationalism, racism, and (hetero)sexism. Through centering youth-led creative responses, his upcoming multi-sited ethnographic research not only offers new empirical insights but also proposes a theoretical model for examining democratic resilience through artistic-political orientations as radical democratic engagement.