Dr. Evelyn Wan is Assistant Professor in Media, Arts, and Society at the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is the Programme Coordinator for MA Arts and Society, and teaches a range of courses on contemporary performance practice, cultural and critical theory, and research methodologies. She also works on interdisciplinary curriculum innovation in the domain of Humane AI. During her postdoctoral research at TILT (Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society), she worked on an ERC-funded project on data protection law and information-induced harms. She graduated cum laude from her PhD programme and was awarded a national dissertation prize by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation in the Netherlands in 2019. She is currently working on her book project, “How We Lost Sense of Time: A Prehistory of Algorithmic Governance”, through the lens of decolonial media studies and performance studies. Her research weaves alternative genealogies between historical technological inventions and contemporary emerging technology. Her writings have appeared in International Journal of Communication, GPS: Global Performance Studies, International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, and Theatre Journal, amongst others.

 

Wan works with interdisciplinary methods owing to her training in the humanities, social sciences, and law. She holds a Research MA cum laude in Media and Performance Studies (2014) and an MA cum laude in Gender Studies (2011), both from Utrecht University. Prior to her post-graduate studies in the Netherlands, she graduated with First Class Honours from the programme Bachelor of Social Sciences (Government and Laws) at the University of Hong Kong. 

 

Wan was the founder of the Future Advisory Board, an emerging scholar initiative within Performance Studies international (PSi), and served as a member from 2014-2019. Outside of her academic endeavours, she has worked on theatre projects with asylum seeker youths and has collaborated with various international artists in staging contemporary dance, physical theatre, and site-specific performances as both performer and dramaturg. Her current performance practice uses artistic research methods that intersect inter-Asian ocean histories with island studies, gender, and religious studies. She is a founding member of the artist collective If Time’s Limited in Hong Kong, and has received funding from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council and Hong Kong Arts Centre for performing arts projects.