Bilal Akar

Bilal Akar is a PhD candidate in the Department of Cultural and Environmental Heritage at the University of Milan and a Research Associate at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Performance and Politics. He is currently a visiting researcher at the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna.

Trained as a sociologist and historian, his research lies at the intersection of theatre and performance studies, decolonial historiography, and the sociology of cultural production in diaspora. His doctoral project, In Search of the “Kurdish Princess”: Decolonizing the Archives and Repertoires of Kurdish Jewish Dancer Leila Bederkhan, examines how statelessness, exile, and minoritarian identity shape performance, archives, and cultural memory across late imperial and post imperial contexts. His broader research interests include Kurdish political and artistic performance, internal diaspora, and subaltern counterpublics.

Alongside his academic work, he has experience as an actor and playwright and is a founding member of the Culture and Theater Research Association, an international organization dedicated to critical training for theatre makers.

During his Visiting PhD fellowship at the University of Virginia, he looks forward to sharing his research with an interdisciplinary community in Jewish Studies and engaging in critical dialogue across fields. His work on little-known histories of Kurdish–Jewish cultural production, addressing questions of statelessness, exile, and antisemitism, seeks to contribute to and expand the program’s existing conversations by foregrounding minoritarian perspectives and underexplored archival histories.