Doctoral Candidate Zhiyuan Jiang

Zhiyuan Jiang is a Ph.D student at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies, funded by the DAAD-GPTS scholarship, supervised by Professor Barbara Mittler and Professor Fu Jin. 

Her research interests lie at the intersection of ethnotheatre studies and cultural studies. Her project focuses on grassroots Xiqu (戲曲, traditional theatre) troupes in China’s rural entertainment markets, centering on the evolution of the improvisational performance traditions during the transcultural processes of the modern era. Her project investigates how these itinerant troupes function as translocal and transcultural media that negotiate across diverse local sensibilities. It explores how improvisational performance, as an embodied practice, articulated vernacular narratives. Furthermore, the project unpacks the entanglements among grassroots performers, intellectual elites, and political agencies, tracing how these interactions dynamically shaped and contested the landscape of modern Chinese popular culture.

Alongside her academic research, Zhiyuan is an active theatre practitioner who explores performance as a vehicle of transculturation. Her artistic lineage bridges Chinese traditional theatre and European avant-garde physical theatre. She was trained by Kunqu (昆曲), Jingju (京剧), and Huangmeixi (黄梅戏) masters in China, as well as European masters from Odin Teatret, Denmark. As a director, her practice encompasses contemporary drama, community-based theatre, and transcultural theatre experiments. Her creative works have been staged in China, the UK, Denmark, and Germany. Her practice complements her academic work, critically exploring the mutation of performance heritage in transcultural dialogues.