Nicole Hodges Persley

Nicole Hodges Persley, Ph.D. is an award-winning professor, theater director, and scholar-artist whose work explores the power of performance, storytelling, and Black culture. She is a faculty member at the University of Kansas, where she teaches in American Studies and African & African American Studies, with additional work in Film & Media Studies and Theatre & Dance.

Dr. Hodges Persley’s teaching and creative work span acting, directing, Hip-Hop Studies, and performance across cultures. Her scholarship focuses on Black performance and Hip-Hop theater, examining how art shapes identity, community, and social change.

She is the author of Sampling and Remixing Blackness in Hip-Hop Theater and Performance and co-author of Breaking It Down: Audition Techniques for Actors of the Global Majority. She also wrote Hip-Hop in Musical Theater and has contributed to and edited several influential volumes, including Diva: Feminism and Fierceness from Pop to Hip-Hop and Black Matters: The Lewis Morrow Plays.

Through her writing and directing, Dr. Hodges Persley is committed to amplifying diverse voices and expanding the landscape of contemporary performance.