Rachel Carrico is a scholar, teacher, and artist working in the fields of dance, theater, and performance studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California–Riverside and an M.A. in Performance Studies from NYU. Carrico is currently an Assistant Professor of Dance Studies in the School of Theatre + Dance at the University of Florida. She has taught in the Dance Department at Reed College, Department of Theatre and Dance at Colorado College, the Dance Department, Anthropology Department, and Folklore & Public Culture Program at the University of Oregon, and in Wilson College's MFA Program. In 2015-16, she was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance Studies in/and the Humanities in the Department of Theater & Performance Studies at Stanford University.
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Carrico's research explores the aesthetic, political, and social histories of second lining, an improvisational dance form rooted in New Orleans's African diaspora parading traditions. Her scholarship has been published in TDR: The Drama Review and TBS: The Black Scholar, awarded the Society of Dance History Scholars' Selma Jeanne Cohen Award for excellence in dance scholarship, and supported by grants from such entities as the UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship Program, the UC Center for New Racial Studies, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, and the Center for Gulf South Research at Tulane University.

Also a practitioner, Carrico completed the Limón Institute's dance teacher training. In 2008, she co-founded Goat in the Road Productions in New Orleans, with whom she has directed two international artist residencies and launched Play/Write, a youth playwriting festival, in New Orleans schools. Carrico is also a contributor to New Orleans's Data News Weekly and a consultant for the 2018 documentary film on New Orleans vernacular dance, Buckumping, by Lily Keber. She parades annually with the Ice Divas Social and Pleasure Club.