डॉ. बी. आर. अम्बेडकर विश्वविद्यालय दिल्ली 
“{...} the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, a ‘t were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure”
---(Shakespeare, Hamlet Act III, 2: 21-25)
“Performance Studies” is an interdisciplinary field of research that draws on the social sciences, the humanities, art and theatre. It focuses on the pervasiveness of performance as a central element of social and cultural life, including not only theatre and dance but also such forms as rituals and practices of everyday life, avant-garde performance art, popular entertainment, sports, political demonstrations and potentially any instance of expressive behaviour or cultural enactment.
It was in the 1960s, Performance Studies emerged as a discipline in the global context, branching out as a separate mode of analysis beyond the Theatre and Drama Studies associated with Literature departments in universities around the world. In India, this specific academic interest was generated in the 1990s, however, MA in Performance Studies (established in 2012) at the School of Culture and Creative Expressions, AUD in the first Masters programme do provide a foundational research oriented training in the discipline.
Our M.A. programme is taught by internationally-recognized faculty in fields ranging from experimental and protest theater, actor training, feminist and queer theory, dance studies, sound studies, performance curation, and critical race theory. With faculties having such varied specializations, M.A. Performance Studies @ SCCE, AUD uses multiple disciplinary perspectives borrowing its major theoretical formulations from ancient theories of arts across cultures, primarily from theories from literature, philosophy and anthropology to very recent mode of communication and digital dynamics of 21st century to analyse and critically understand the various performance processes and practices, both by engaging with theory and practice. In the process it would hope to contribute in the development of engaged scholarship in the field with a unique perspective given the rich varied experience situated and informed by the culture and heritage of India. This programme allows students to develop a unique critical thinking in the field of performance,which can be further implemented in their own practice.