Received a B.F.A. in acting, with a focus on experimental theatre, from New York University’s Tish School of the Arts. Some years later, while also teaching yoga in Los Angeles, she received an M.A. in Theology (2012) from Loyola Marymount University. A few of the topics of Ms. Shaw’s previous presentations include: embodied learning in Bharatanatyam, the movement of sound in Srividya kundalini, and exploring the use of the subversion of derogatory language as a form of empowerment. Ms. Shaw will spend much of the 2018-2019 year at her research sites, which are two interrelated Hindu temples in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. Broadly, her dissertation focuses on embodied experience of place and story. Her focus is on two of the local forms of the Goddess, and the versions/interpretations of their stories told by people generally left out of the historical archives, particularly women. Her theoretical approaches include those related to embodiment and movement as forms of knowledge, affect theory, and theories of Tamil-ness (roughly, based on modern applications of ancient Tamil poetics highlighting environmental exchange, affect and interconnectivity).