Dance scholar and martial arts practitioner Janet O'shea seeks to refigure athletics through the lens of dance, urging us to reimagine how we think about sports, economics, and even politics through the lens of martial arts.
Dr. Janet O’Shea, Dance Scholar and Martial Arts Practitioner, is the author of Risk, Failure, Play: What Dance Reveals about Martial Arts Training (2018, Oxford University Press) and At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage (2007, Wesleyan University Press). Recipient of a UCLA Transdisciplinary Seed Grant to study the cognitive benefits of Filipino Martial Arts training, she gave a TEDx Talk on competitive play and has offered keynote presentations at the Martial Arts Studies conference and Dance/Performance in Interdisciplinary Perspective Symposium. Her essays have been published in five languages and seven countries. She is professor of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA.
