Clare Croft is a dance historian and theorist, as well as a dramaturg and curator. She is the author of Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford, 2015), a study of the U.S. State Department’s sponsorship of international dance tours as a form of cultural diplomacy. She is also the editor of the book and website Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings (Oxford, 2017), a collection of essays by scholars and artists. Croft also curates the EXPLODE: queer dance festival, which began as a series of performances in Ann Arbor from 2012-2015, and has since toured to New York, Chicago, and California. Croft is also the founder and curator of Daring Dances, a curatorial initiative based in southeast Michigan. An active dramaturg, Croft frequently collaborates with artists including Thomas DeFrantz and Jennifer Harge. Croft is appointed in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas-Austin.