Dr. Layla Zami (*1985 in Paris, France) is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Collaborative Research Centre Intervening Arts, with an appointment at Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Theaterwissenschaft. Her interdisciplinary research orbits around the nexus of performance (studies), cultural memory, art (history), and critical race/gender studies. Zami's first book, Contemporary PerforMemory: Dancing Through Spacetime, Historical Trauma, and Diaspora, received an Honorable Mention in the Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research (2023). Her current research in project team B05 »Acoustic Disruptions« explores the poetics and politics of sound as a form of intervention into memory discourses and practices. At the CRC, she initiated the podcast Sonic Interventions and is on the programming team of the CRC's 2024 annual conference Moving (in) Constellations (FU Berlin/HKW). Zami's research, teaching, and advising/mentoring reflect her interest in the relationality between academia, society, and the arts. During her New York years, Zami was a Curator for the International Human Rights Art Festival, a Visiting Research Scholar at Columbia University, and later a faculty member at the Pratt Institute, where she also co-chaired Black Lives Matter at Pratt. She is blessed to have toured internationally with Oxana Chi Dance&Art, performing music, spoken words, and theater in venues such as Volksbühne, HAU, Abrons Arts Center, 14Y Theater, The Kitchen, as well as many festivals and universities. Zami's work is invigorated by the belief that art can be political while at the same time expressing »some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style« to quote from Maya Angelou.