Prof Surafel Wondimu Abebe
BA Literature; MA Cultural Studies, Addis Ababa University (AAU), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; PhD Performance Historiography, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA); Inaugural Okwui Enwezor Postdoctoral Fellowship in Visual arts, Performance Studies and Critical Humanities, The Africa Institute, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Abebe holds the position of Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and Theory at AAU — an interdisciplinary academic research institute dedicated to the study, research, and documentation of Africa and the African diaspora. Prof Abebe uses academia, performance, and media as sites of cultural politics from which to interrogate representational practices. As a public intellectual, Abebe engages with sedimented embodied historiographies to understand what it means to be human in the here and now.
Abebe has worked with the National Theatre in Addis Ababa and other cultural institutions in Ethiopia as an actor, playwright and director; co-founded a local television station, ASHAM; is an editorial member of AGITATE!; and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of African Cultural Studies. Abebe has co-edited The Imagined New: Or, What happens When History is a Catastrophe? (Iwalewa, 2023) with Anthony Bogues, Leora Farber-Blackbeard and Zamansele Nsele, as well as Ethiopia: Modern Nation, Ancient Roots (2024) with Dagmawi Woubshet and Elizabeth W Giorgis.
Other publications include ‘Mindful Space-making: Crossing Boundaries with Ananya Dance Theatre’, in Dancing Transnational Feminisms: Ananya Dance Theatre and the Art of Social Justice (University of Washington Press, 2022); ‘Left Ruins in Ethiopia: Imagining Otherwise Amid Necroempistemic Historiography’, Pamiętni Teatranly 70(4) (2021); ‘Fractured Threads: Surafel’s Letter to the Class’, AGITATE! 3 (2021); and newspaper articles, including ‘Wither Addis Ababa: The Urban Question as a Transnational Issue’, Reporter (5 May 2024); and ‘What Does it Mean to be Human: Heritage and Social justice’, Reporter (21 April 2024).
Prof Surafel Wondimu Abebe joined VIAD in 2019.
