Faculty Fellows
The Center for World Performance Studies provides summer funding to individual faculty members to pursue research projects which involve traveling to various sites for field work, both domestically and internationally. We encourage inventive ideas, especially those that involve thematic support for CWPS mission, including ethnography and performance as research. Fellows are invited to share their research with the CWPS community through our Faculty Lecture Series and as mentors to graduate students in the Certificate in World Performance Studies.
Applications to the Faculty Fellows Program are due March 8, 2027.
Apply for a CWPS Faculty Fellowship
CWPS Faculty Fellowships 2027-2028
DEADLINE: Monday, March 8, 2027
Grant awards of $6,000 are available to individual faculty members to pursue research projects that can be carried out domestically or internationally within guidelines of University travel restrictions. Allowable expenses include, but are not limited to: archival research expenses, online seminars, lessons, conference fees, equipment directly related to the completion of research (including creation of new performative work), stipends for creative collaborators, research assistants, audio/video production, accommodations and travel.
Successful proposals should align with the CWPS mission statement. Successful proposals often, but are not required to: demonstrate long-term scholarly impact, utilize “performance as research” modes of scholarly production, engage with Performance Studies methods, theories, methodologies, center performance as the object or inquiry, engage in exploratory research on/through the creation of artworks, support project development at early and exploratory stages such as pilot versions/workshops/first drafts, enhance the learning outcomes and experiences of U-M students, and engage with communities.
Funds may be requested for pilot projects or to supplement existing projects, however, priority will be given to applicants who have not previously received CWPS summer research funds. Previous faculty awardees should wait for a period of two years before re-applying. Recipients of Faculty Fellowship funding awards will be asked to fulfill the following expectations during the 2027-2028 academic year:
- Present their research as part of the CWPS Faculty Lecture series;
- Provide a synopsis of research for CWPS website;
- Attend CWPS networking events when possible, such as the CWPS Fellowship Luncheon, guest artist receptions and performances;
- Become a CWPS Faculty Affiliate.
HOW TO APPLY
Proposals should include: (1) Center for World Performance Studies Faculty Fellowship Online Application Form; (2) an explanatory statement no longer than 1,000 words; (3) a current CV for the principal organizer no longer than 3 pages; and (4) a budget detailing anticipated costs and all sources of support (pending and confirmed).
Please direct inquiries to: [email protected]
Proposals are due by Monday, March 8, 2027 and recipients will be notified by Friday, April 9. Awards are to be used during the summer of 2027.
2026-2027 Faculty Fellows
Christi-Anne Castro
Associate Dean for Faculty Development; Associate Professor of Music
Professor Castro will launch a Filipino American children’s musical and rondalla music tour featuring the Iskwelahang Pilipino Rondalla of Boston, where Castro serves as music director, composer, arranger, and performer. The tour will bring an original children’s musical, Kalipay and Gamay, The Musical, and additional Philippine rondalla concert music to Filipino American communities in Massachusetts, Seattle, and the Bay Area, supporting community engagement while also advancing Castro’s research on Filipino American music, community music-making, belonging, and diasporic cultural expression.
Kris Johnson
Assistant Professor of Music
Professor Johnson, Assistant Professor of Jazz Trumpet, will premiere A Song for the Melanated Ones, a new jazz orchestra and vocal composition to be commissioned and premiered at The Soapbox Presents’ 5th Annual Big Band Jubilee, a Juneteenth celebration at Riverbank State Park in Harlem this summer. The project honors Harlem’s legacy as a center of Black artistic innovation while exploring themes of freedom, restoration, dignity, and resilience through orchestration, improvisation, and vocal performance. Johnson will serve as musical director, arranger, and featured soloist, collaborating with a professional big band and vocalists; the premiere will also be documented through video and media capture as a pilot for future presentations, research dissemination, and educational use.
Ashley Lucas
Professor of Theatre & Drama, the Residential College, the Penny Stamps School of Art & Design, and English Language and Literature
Building on her translation and 2025 publication of Escaping Into Words: A Creative Writing Workbook—created by Brazilian scholars Vicente Concilio and Caroline Vetori for incarcerated writers— Professor Lucas will join Concilio and Vetori in Costa Rica during a Casa Uno artist residency in Atenas. There, they will develop a second volume of Escaping Into Words using prompts by incarcerated writers, collaborate with Costa Rican theatre artist Mario Vircha and local institutions, offer theatre workshops for incarcerated people and students, present talks, and explore ongoing prison arts programming in Costa Rica. Afterward, Lucas will return to Michigan to publish and distribute free copies of the second volume to incarcerated writers in Michigan prisons, while Concilio and Vetori will publish and distribute the Portuguese edition in Brazilian prisons.
Samantha Mecca
Professor of Dance
Professor Mecca will pursue a research trip to Montreal, Quebec, to study the city’s distinctive pipe organ concert culture at L’Oratoire Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal and the Basilique Notre-Dame de Montreal, two major Catholic churches with historically significant organs that now host inclusive, public-facing performance traditions. Mecca will attend organ concerts, interview and receive tutorials from titular organists, and conduct archival research at McGill University’s Hellmuth Wolff Organ Collection to understand how these sacred spaces and instruments have been repurposed within Quebec’s post–Quiet Revolution secular culture. In addition, she is especially interested in the relationship between organ performance, religious history, gender identity, audience access, and contemporary cultural inclusion.
Andy Milne
Associate Professor of Music
Professor Milne will perform his 2024 recording Time Will Tell at the Chamber Music America Conference in Chicago. The project features Milne’s cross-cultural, cross-genre compositions inspired by his experience meeting his birth mother and blends Japanese koto, jazz piano trio, and tenor saxophone; although the Juno-nominated recording has received critical attention, the full work has only had one public performance. Milne aims to use the Chamber Music America platform to expand public engagement with the music, reach presenters and arts professionals, and generate future performance opportunities for this ensemble and for related long-term creative research, including a larger planned project, Oh Canadiana, involving diverse Canadian musical voices. He situates the work within a broader artistic inquiry into the meeting of koto and piano traditions, chamber music aesthetics, improvisation, and intercultural collaboration.
Aaron Turner
Assistant Professor, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design
Professor Turner will develop a new body of interdisciplinary sculptural and performance work exploring the cultural, physical, and aesthetic meanings of micro-rhythm, groove, and “behind-the-beat” timing in African American music traditions. Inspired by J Dilla, Chris Dave, Terry Adkins, Anne Danielsen’s scholarship on rhythm in digital music, and Turner’s own ongoing Black Alchemy series, the project investigates how rhythmic practices in hip hop, R&B, jazz, funk, and related Black musical forms can be translated into material objects, photography, installation, and live performance. Turner plans to fabricate percussion-based sculptures using drum shells, cymbals, tambourines, hi-hat stands, hardware, and digital controllers, eventually incorporating movement, vocalists, musicians, and electronic music equipment into an immersive presentation. The work continues his larger artistic inquiry into identity, historical narrative, abstraction, repetition, remixing, and Black cultural memory, while also laying groundwork for future research at the RITMO Centre in Oslo.