Post by Ariane Gros

🎓 I became Dr.! 🎓 After three years of researching and teaching the cultural history of clowns, I’m happy to share that I have successfully defended my PhD, earning the highest distinction at both universities where I graduated : summa cum laude at the University of Cologne and cum laude at the University of Amsterdam. I am deeply grateful to my supervisors — Sruti Bala, Peter Marx, and Stephan Packard — as well as to my friends, colleagues, and family for their support throughout this journey. My research notably demonstrates how the legitimation process of clown practitioners in the 1960s has contributed to the erasure and silencing of historical narratives—particularly colonial histories and racialized constructions of the 'Other'— which continue to resonate in the semiotic and dramaturgical dimensions of clown performances. I propose a new historiographic and epistemic framework for understanding such cultural figures who shape collective imaginaries and social hierarchies. I hope that by bringing these histories to light, practitioners might engage more consciously with the affordances they activate, and that scholars might attend more critically to the narratives they reproduce.