Hugh Downs School professor receives innovation award, multiple grants

Serap Erincin, assistant professor of performance studies and intercultural communication, senior Global Futures scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and vice president of performance studies international, has recently received a major honor — the Hugh Downs Faculty Innovation Award — and two prestigious awards — the Humanities Institute Special Project Seed Grant and the Melikian Center Research Fund.

The innovation award will support Erincin’s cutting-edge performance research bridging technology, neuroscience, and the arts; her book project reimagining live performance as a space of cognitive, technological, and aesthetic transformation; and provide seed funding toward establishing a Neurohumanities Lab at ASU. The grants will support her work on social justice performance, especially her installations confronting global displacement.

Erincin’s research centers on how contemporary performers use and are transformed by embodied digital technologies in live performance. Her book project focuses on The Wooster Group, a legendary experimental theatre company in New York known for its innovative integration of media, sound, and performance. 

“Their practice redefines what it means to be present in performance,” Erincin explains.

Drawing on over a decade of research — including rehearsal access, interviews with director Elizabeth LeCompte and performers, and study of the group’s media systems — Erincin introduces the concept of technologized psychophysicality, in which actors interact not just with each other but with machines, memories, and media fragments.

Erincin situates this method in a broader genealogy that stretches back to early 20th-century psychophysical training, while extending it through 21st-century conversations. Her book project argues that The Wooster Group’s work offers a vital lens for understanding how performance persists — and adapts — in a media-saturated, posthuman era.

“This is about more than theatre,” she says. “It’s about how we move, remember, and relate in automated, mediated systems.”

The Hugh Downs Award will also help seek funding to launch the Neurohumanities Lab at ASU — a cross-disciplinary hub linking communication, performance studies, neuroscience, philosophy, and the arts. Building on Erincin’s leadership of the Neurohumanities Initiative at Penn State, where she curated global salons with guests like Rosi Braidotti and Scott Shepherd, the lab will promote collaborative research, public events, and graduate mentorship.

“Artists and scientists alike explore how we attend, feel, and make sense of the world. A neurohumanities framework allows us to collaborate across disciplines,” Erincin says.

Funding from the Humanities Institute and the Melikian Center will support Erincin’s development of a multimedia exhibition, "Human Rights/Human Rites." First developed during residencies at the Borland Project Space and Catwalk Art Institute, the exhibition invites participants into immersive landscapes of imagery and ritual.

A centerpiece sculpture — the Mediterranean Sea rendered in yarn and children’s shoes — moves gently and casts shadows across gallery walls. “This sea has become a graveyard for thousands,” she says.

“This work honors them — and asks us to question the systems that made their journeys necessary.”

Drawing on UNHCR, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports, the exhibition will be accompanied by panels, lectures and community workshops in collaboration with ASU units and Phoenix-based organizations. Rituals such as paper boat-making will build a living archive of public testimony and civic engagement.

Erincin’s scholarship and creative work — presented across six continents — has earned recognition from the National Communication Association, American Society for Theatre Research, American Theatre and Drama Society and more. She’s published in leading journals including Modern Drama and Performance Research, and volumes from major university presses.

A two-time Mellon Fellow at Harvard’s School of Theatre and Performance Studies, she received the Dwight Conquergood Award, the highest honor from Performance Studies international. Support from her recent awards will position Erincin at the leading edge of transdisciplinary innovation and global engagement in her field.

The Hugh Downs Faculty Innovation Award was established in 2020 to honor the legacy of Hugh Downs, a champion of public communication and lifelong learning.