Dr Alissa Mello

I am a theatre artist, scholar and a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at the University of Exeter. My interests include women and performance, gender, identity and practice. My current project is a trans-historical study of women practitioners, (re)presentation of the female and gender in Punch and Judy. I have presented at numerous international conferences. My publications include journal articles, book chapters, and as an editor: Sandglass Theater: The Time Before the Glass Turns Over (2022) with Andrew Periale, Women and Puppetry: Critical and Historical Investigations (2019) with Claudia Orenstein and Cariad Astles that was the recipient of the 2022 UNIMA-USA Nancy Staub Award and finalist for ATHE’s 2020 Excellence in Editing Award, and two forthcoming edited volumes under contract with Routledge:

• Race, Gender and Disability in Puppetry and Material Performance, co-edited with Paulette Richards and Laura Purcell-Gates
• Making Meaning with Puppets: Material, Performance, Perception with Dassia Posner and Claudia Orenstein.

I was a founding member of Inkfish, and performed and choreographed with Theodora Skipitares, Anna Kiraly, Jane Catherine Shaw and Ishara Puppet Theater. She was a Fulbright Teaching Fellow at Listaháskóli Íslands (2018) and from 2019 - 2022 she was the Managing Director at Sandglass Center for Puppetry and Theater Research. Beginning in 2023, I will be the editor of UNIMA-USA’s biannual journal Puppetry International available for purchase online at https://www.unima-usa.org/purchase-puppetry-international.