Profile

Heunjung Lee is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Calgary. She received her M.A. in Performing Arts Studies from Seoul National University in 2016 and completed her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at the University of Alberta in 2023.

She is a performance studies scholar whose research intervenes in age-inclusive and dementia-friendly discourse through both critical analyses of cultural representations and arts-based participatory research. Her SSHRC-funded doctoral research, through critical analyses of playtexts and performance productions, examined aesthetic strategies that give embodied expressions to non-normative modes of time and reality perception among people with dementia.

Her SSHRC-funded postdoctoral research, "Moving through Dementia" (2025-2027), further explores concepts of creative care, inclusivity, and accessibility. By co-creating a culturally tailored movement program with Korean older adults with dementia and their family caregivers, her research examines how a culturally responsive dance program can enable embodied creativity, cultural memory, and selfhood of the participants.