Rüstem Ertuğ Altınay is an Associate Professor of Performing Arts and the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Performance and Politics in the Department of Cultural and Environmental Heritage at the University of Milan. Ertuğ’s primary research areas include minoritarian theatre cultures, feminist and queer media, performance, and literature, theories of performance and performativity, critical archival studies, and the cultural history of Turkey. He currently serves as the principal investigator of three research projects: Staging National Abjection: Theatre and Politics in Turkey and Its Diasporas (European Research Council Starting Grant); Negotiating Abjection: Performance and Politics Among Turkey’s Diasporas in Lombardy (ERC Attractiveness Grant, Cariplo Foundation); and Archives of Abjection: Minoritarian Cultural Production in Turkey and Its Diasporas (Young Researchers Grant, Next Generation EU Program and the Ministry of Universities and Research, Italy).

He has co-edited special issues on Turkey and its diasporas for Comparative Drama and on archives and popular culture for Archives and Records and The Journal of Popular Culture as well as a dossier on Ottoman and Turkish theatre historiography for Theatre and Performance Notes and Counternotes. His essays have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including Theatre Journal, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Sexualities, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Feminist Media Studies, the Journal of Women’s History, Performance Research, Comparative Drama, Youth Theatre Journal, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, Culture, Theory, and Critique, Archival Science, and Radical History Review. Ertuğ is also a dramatic translator, dramaturg, and playwright. Essays on his theatre work appeared in European Stages and Theatre Research International.