Alexandra Balona is an independent curator, researcher and professor, based in Porto. She has a PhD in Culture Studies (2023, Magna cum Laude) from Faculty of Human Sciences Portuguese Catholic University, with the dissertation "Troubling the Stage: Openness, Impurity and Intensity. The Politicality of Marlene Monteiro Freitas' Choreographic Work", supervised by Rector of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Professor Isabel Capeloa Gil and Professor Samuel Weber, Northwestern University, Chicago. She completed the curriculum of the PhD in Media and Communications at the European Graduate School (2014, all but dissertation) in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where she studied with Giorgio Agamben, Jean-Luc Nancy, Werner Hamacher, Samuel Weber, Claire Denis, Sylvère Lotringer, Michael Hardt, among others. Since 2022, she is an invited Assistant Professor at School of the Arts - Catholic University Porto, where she lectures Art History, Contemporary Art, Culture Studies, among others. She is a full research member at CITAR (Research Centre in Science and Technology of the Arts), Catholic University Porto, and research member at The Art and Critical Studies Research Group, CEAA (Centro de Estudos Arnaldo Araújo), ESAP - Escola Superior Artística do Porto. She is a founding member of the independent art space Rampa (Porto), integrating since 2019 the programming team, and since 2023 she is a member of its Artistic Direction. Balona curated several projects, as a team and independently: - "Nuno Silas: Madjoni-Djoni. Portraits of Mozambican Miners and their Families Revisited" (Rampa, 2024); - "Anton Vidokle: Citizens of the Cosmos" and "Future Past Imaginaries" (Rampa, 2021); - "Um Elefante no Palácio de Cristal" (Galeria Municipal Porto, 2021); - "Openness, Impurity and Intensity. Around the Choreographic Work of Marlene Monteiro Freitas" (Teatro Municipal do Porto, 2020); - "Metabolic Rifts" (Museu de Serralves and Teatro Municipal do Porto, 2017-2018). She is the author of the publication "Dança Fora da Si. A Obra Coreográfica de Marlene Monteiro Freitas (Dafne Editora, 2025) and of its English edition "Troubling the Stage. Marlene Monteiro Freitas' Choreographic Work" (Lenz Press, 2025); she is co-editor of "Cosmismo" (forthcoming, 2025); "Metabolic Rifts: Reader" (Atlas Projects, 2019) and "An Untimely Book" (Lokomotiva, 2018). She publishes on performance and contemporary dance at Público newspaper and in art magazines such as Contemporânea and Art Press. Regarding her academic education, in 2010-11, she was visiting scholar at the EHESS - École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and at Paris VIII. She attended the Paris Program in Critical Theory, organised by Samuel Weber (Northwestern University, Chicago) in Paris. Postgraduated in Contemporary Art in 2007 (School of the Arts, UCP), in 2001, she graduated in Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture Porto University (Pre-Bologna), was Erasmus student in Architecture at the Tëchnische Universität Berlin (1999-2000), and collaborated as an architect in several architecture offices in Porto and Zürich (2001-2009). Furthermore, she was trained in contemporary dance.