DR. SYAFIQ FALIQ BIN ALFAN

Syafiq Faliq Alfan, also known as SEFA, is a theatre and performance studies scholar, performing artist, educator, and cultural researcher specialising in cultural change and memory in Asian traditional performing arts. He is particularly interested in how traditional forms transform across time, media, and space, and how these shifts relate to cultural memory, philosophy of history, and lived experience. He earned his Doctoral Degree from the Faculty of Integrated Arts and Science at Hiroshima University, Japan, in 2022, through research on the methodological construction of analysis towards the traditional dances of Mak Yong and Noh using motion capture technology.

As an outsider-artist, SEFA has been a member of the Ipoh artist-collective Projek Rabak since 2011, where he currently serves as director. Since 2007, he has actively participated in numerous local and international performances, focusing on the intersection between Corporeal Mime by Étienne Decroux and the improvisational techniques of Malay traditional performing arts. His performance research centres on the body as subject and its entanglement with elements within its environment, including space, audience, and technology, often drawing on Practice-as-Research as a core method.

SEFA is also a creative writer, with works such as Melankolia Bisu (2014) and Novel Eksperimental (2013), among others.

Currently, his research interests revolve around memory studies and the philosophy of history to understand Mak Yong history and its multiple trajectories across regions and narratives. He believes that enriching the discourse on Malaysian traditional performing arts, through both theory and practice, will deepen our understanding of their role in shaping local identities and collective memory.

He is also interested in engaging Digital Humanities at the intersection of aesthetics, ecology, local wisdom, identity formation, and arts biomechanics. Through media and technology, particularly motion capture, he explores how different experiences and cultures can be understood in greater nuance, especially in relation to various modes of cultural change in performing arts. His work sits at the crossroads of performance theory, cultural and memory studies, media studies, and philosophical inquiry.

As a scholar of performance and theatre studies, he believes the role of the performing arts extends beyond the discourse of performance and performativity, and should also engage critically with issues of sustainability, environmental impact, socio-economics, education, architecture, and technology.

Potential postgraduate students should be prepared for an integrated and interdisciplinary approach, and be willing to develop practical and high-impact research that benefits society while remaining sensitive to culture, history, and the evolving realities of performance.