Biography
What can queer nightlives tell us about the world, and what can nightlife spaces and their practices offer amidst increasing global precarity?
Shelley Pryde is a second year PhD Feminist Studies student at the University of Washington. Her research applies a transnational feminist lens to queer nightlife, drag performance, and related artistic interventions. Methodologically, her work employs multimodal ethnography and participatory creative work.
Her master's study investigated the art of drag in Shanghai, China. For her doctoral research, she is focused on her home city of Cape Town, South Africa. She is interested in how 'alternative'/ pop-up drag and nightlife events in Cape Town intersect with post-apartheid spatial segregation, queer organising, and neoliberal political economy.
Beyond the academy, Shelley occasionally performs as a drag king, and produces cultural events. These engagements within the communities she is researching inform her approach to scholarship.