Janet O’Shea is the author of Risk, Failure, Play: What Dance Reveals about Martial Arts Training (Oxford University Press 2019) and At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage (Wesleyan University Press 2007). She is the co-editor of the co-editor of the Routledge Dance Studies Reader (second edition 2010) and a member of the editorial review board for the Routledge Online Encyclopedia of Modernism. Her essays have been published in five languages and seven countries.

​

Having trained as a bharata natyam dancer, she is a practitioner of jeet kune do, kickboxing, Brazilian jiu jitsu, Filipino martial arts, and empowerment self-defense. 

​

Writing as Jay O’Shea, she has also published short fiction and general non-fiction. 

​

Her current research project, Bodies on the Line: Physical Risk and Social Justice, focuses on the role of corporeal risk-taking and political advocacy in three direct action arenas: urban cycling campaigns, border humanitarian aid, and farmed animal rescue.