Devika Ranjan

About Devika Ranjan

Born in Nashik, India and raised in various parts of the United States—from mountain towns to prairie landscapes and coastal communities— Devika Ranjan discovered her roots through her family's journey across the country. Devika is now a writer, educator, and theater-maker who tells critical and creative stories about migration.

Devika infuses joy and justice in community-based work, using performance to cultivate communities of care. She specializes in devised immersive performance and has facilitated workshops with refugees and migrants internationally. Her work has been commended by the Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle for critical storytelling about immigrants worldwide.  

Devika works at the intersection of migration, performance studies, and cross-cultural practice. As associate director of Albany Park Theater Project in Chicago, Devika worked with immigrant and first-generation teens to create ethnographic immersive theater about community issues like family separation, labor rights, and deportation. She has designed and taught original courses for the Theater and Performance Studies Department at Georgetown University; she has also been an invited lecturer at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, King’s College London, Syracuse University, Northeastern Illinois University, and Illinois State University. 

Devika studied culture and politics, with a minor in Arabic, at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. As a Marshall Scholar alumna, Devika holds a distinction from the University of Cambridge for her MPhil in sociology, where she did research on the electronic tagging of asylum-seekers. The research was used as part of a non-profit’s campaign against harmful alternatives to immigrant detention. Devika also has an MA in applied theatre from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she theorized about migration dramaturgy.

Devika was an inaugural fellow at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics from 2017-2019. Previously, she has been a global cultural fellow at the Institute for International Cultural Relations, University of Edinburgh, and a Projects for Peace Fellow with the Davis Foundation.