Description / Biography

Kambrea Lagrosa is a Mexican-Filipino costume designer, scholar, and Ph.D. student in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University at Buffalo. She is fascinated by the ways costume, embodiment, and cultural identity come together, especially in horror cinema, and sees costume as both a creative art and a way to explore culture, identity, and storytelling.

With an M.F.A. in Costume Design from the University of Florida, Kambrea combines hands-on making with critical thinking. Her current research focuses on Latina “scream queens,” exploring how race, femininity, and costume shape how characters are seen and received by audiences. She also designed costumes for UB’s experimental production of King Henry VI and contributed to The Henry Experiment: Exploring Shakespeare’s Text with OP-ish Methods, which will be published in Theatre Topics in 2026.

Kambrea has worked as a Research Assistant on Bringing Sets and Costume Designs to Fruition Made By Teams by Jennifer Dasher, Lynne M. Koscielniak, and Jonathan Shimon (Routledge, 2023), and previously served on the College of the Arts Research Committee at UF. Her work and leadership have been recognized through the College of Arts and Sciences Diversity Fellowship at UB, a recurring Steig Olson Scholarship, the Florida Theatrical Association Scholarship (2021), the Brenna Rizzardi Scholarship for Design (2022), and the Grinter Fellowship from UF (2019–2021).

Passionate about teaching, Kambrea works to create spaces where students feel encouraged to experiment, reflect, and take ownership of their ideas. She also advocates for people of color in theatre and academia, actively addressing the absence of marginalized voices in higher education and professional leadership. Beyond academic spaces, she shares her research with public audiences through panels and talks at MegaCon Orlando, SwampCon, FanExpo Portland, and Pagan Pride WNY, including presentations such as “Dressed to Kill: Costumes of the Final Girl” and “Aesthetics of Witchcraft: Witches in Media.”