Audrey Ellis

Audrey Lane Ellis is an interdisciplinary philosopher trained in the traditions of phenomenology, ethics, and aesthetics, in addition to women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. She worked extensively as a performance artist and choreographer for many years and directed a dance improvisation festival in Upstate New York for 7 years. Her research is focused on contemporary philosophies of embodied knowledge and corporeal ethics, with an emphasis on how these theories materialize in dance practices and improvisational art practices more generally. She received her MA in Philosophy and Art at Stony Brook University in 2009 and received her PhD in Philosophy from Stony Brook University in 2021. She has published numerous reviews as a dance and art critic for The L Magazine, Brooklyn Magazine and CultureBot, as well as in Dance Research Journal in April 2019. She has received commissions for her professional chorographic work from Hobart and William Smith College (Geneva, NY), The Finger Lakes Community Arts Grant (Hornell, NY), The Capeizo Ballet Makers New York City Grant (NYC), as well as performance venues such as Triskelion Arts (NYC), Dixon Place (NYC), Metropolis Opera Project (Ithaca, NY), and Atlas Studios (Newburgh, NY). Ellis received the Emerging Philosophy/Aesthetics Scholar Award through the American Aesthetics Society in 2022. Ellis’s course offerings at The Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University have included “Social and Political Philosophy,” “Critical Phenomenologies of Race,” “New Material Feminisms,” and “Phenomenology and The Work of Art.” Her forthcoming manuscript is titled Improvisation and The Curious Body and will be published in 2025. She currently resides in Philadelphia.