Prof. Dr. Sandra Noeth

Sandra Noeth is a professor at the HZT Berlin, and a practising curator and dramaturge. She specialises in body-based research in the arts, society and politics. She often brings together knowledge from diverse artistic, social, political, and activist fields and practices. 

Sandra is an international lecturer and educator. She was a Senior Lecturer at the Stockholm University of the Arts from 2012-18 and a guest professor at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut from 2015-16. Since 2018, she has been curating the HZT/SODA-Lecture Series, which brings together international researchers, artists and thinkers at the intersections of aesthetics, politics and ethics. She also initiated the Sites of Knowing project series (2025 ongoing), which explores approaches, contexts and conditions for body-based research in the arts (with R. Najdi and N. Delić).  From 2025 onwards, Sandra acts as Deputy Artistic Director of the centre. 

Selected research and curatorial activities focus on the role, status and agency of bodies in bordering processes such as What does it take to cross a border? (ifa-gallery Berlin, 2018-19); the relationship between arts, bodies and the unequal politics of protection as explored in the international research group and program series Bodies, un-protected with Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main (2020-22); the embodiment of structural violence  as examined in the program and workshop series Violence of Inscriptions, co-curated with A. Zaides and HAU- Hebbel am Ufer Berlin (2015-2018); and practices of collective learning (see: Hållning–a body-based platform for collective learning, with MDT Stockholm, 2020-21). As a dramaturg, Sandra works in both independent and institutional contexts. She has collaborated with Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué on the performance Four Walls and a Roof (Festival d’Automne Paris, 2025), and served as Head of Dramaturgy and Research at Tanzquartier Wien from 2009-14. 

Selected publications include:Resilient Bodies, Residual Effects. Artistic Articulations of Borders and Collectivity in Lebanon and Palestine (monograph, 2019); Bodies of Evidence: Ethics, Aesthetics and Politics of Movement (co-edited with G. Ertem, 2018); Violence: Embodiment (edited for the PARSE research journal, 2022); Breathe. Critical Investigations into the Inequalities of Life (co-edited with J. Janša, 2023); Shielding: Body-Based Studies on Integrity and Protection (co-edited with J. Janša and S. Umathum, 2024); Classed Bodies. The Performance of Discrimination in the Arts (co-edited with D. Belasco Rogers, due to be published 2026); Body Concepts (co-edited with L. Ruprecht, forthcoming 2027). Together with J. Janša , S. Umathum and transcript publishers, she edits Corporeal Matters, a publication series on body-based research in the arts. Sandra is currently preparing a book project on the ambivalent status of the body in international humanitarian law from a performative perspective. 

Sandra acts regularly as a consultant and adviser on dance, choreography, performance art and research for national and international juries and appointment committees. She considers PhD proposals related to the aforementioned subject areas.