Atefeh Zargarzadeh

Atefeh, also known as Aati, is a PhD candidate in Theatre Studies at the University of Victoria. She earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in English Language and Literature in Iran. Her research interests include diaspora studies, intercultural theatre historiography, and digital repository development with a focus on preserving and curating digital archives that enhance research accessibility and intercultural understanding.

She is also a graduate student fellow at UVic’s Center for Global Studies for the 2025-26 academic year, and her doctoral research project aims to historicize nuanced narratives of dislocation and identity negotiation within minoritized communities, particularly focusing on less-represented Middle Eastern immigrant theatre practitioners in the diaspora. It critically examines how these diverse exilic identities intersect with the politics of theatre production, cultural appropriation, and the commodification of identity representations within Canada’s intercultural theatre spaces.

In recent years, while working as a teaching assistant and freelance translator, Atefeh has collaborated on various research projects. She has contributed as an event co-coordinator, website content manager, and co-author for the Indigenous Theatre Festival project, as well as a research assistant and co-author for the “How We Gather Now” virtual exhibition (which is part of the Gatherings Project: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance), and as a regional specialist on the Digital Guide to Theatre of the Middle East (DGTOME) project. Currently, she is co-editing the Routledge Companion for Language Reawakening through the Arts as part of the editorial team.

Atefeh has co-authored publications on language revitalization and arts-based research, including “Language Reawakening through Theatre” in the Routledge Handbook of Arts and Global Development and “Healing-ish Healing: Languages Heroes on an Indigenous Theatre Festival” in Performing Knowledge: Arts-Based Research in Global Development.

Among Atefeh’s other published works are “How We Gather Now: A Finding Aid” in the Canadian Theatre Review, English translations of three plays—The Hidden Shadow, So, What Do You Want?, and The Ant and the Grasshopper—by the Iranian playwright Simin Amirian (published by Mah Par Publications in 2015 and 2019, Iran)—along with Persian translations of Brian Friel’s The Bear (After Chekhov) and various critical essays on Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret, Peter Brook’s Orghast and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

Supervisor: Dr. Allana Lindgren