I completed my PhD at the University of Reading in 2010, where I was also a teaching and academic fellow for two years. In August 2011 I took up my position as Lecturer in Theatre at York St John University. My main research interest in technology, audience (dis)engagement and performance partially derives from my PhD thesis Mixed-media Theatre: A Phenomenological Exploration of Body/Technology Chiasm in Contemporary Greek Theatre, which focused on the reconfiguration of both body and space through technology in mixed-media environments. Other research interests include: performance phenomenology, interactive and participatory art, digital practices in performance, solitude and social engagement in contemporary art practice.
I co-edited and authored in the first edited collection devoted to the relationship and the tensions between performance and phenomenology (Performance and Phenomenology: Traditions and Transformations, Routledge, 2015), which has also come out as paperback (2017). I am commited to interdisciplinary research and the exploration of human experience through the symbiosis and the tensions between performance and technology. I am the co-editor of the special issues: ‘Encountering the Digital in Performance: Deployment | Engagement | Trace,’ (Contemporary Theatre Review October 2017) and ‘Hybridities: The intersections between Performance, Science and the Digital’, (International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media, October 2014).
Between 2011 to 2014 I was co-convenor of the Performance and New Technologies Working Group for TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association). I am also a member of Performance Studies International (Psi), and International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR).
I am currently working on a monograph entitled In Solitude: The Philosophy of Digital Performance Encounters (forthcoming with Bloomsbury), which explores modes of solitude in contemporary art and performance practice. The book focuses on case studies of small and large-scale productions that offer opportunities to consider how our interactions with others create the worlds we perceive. Bringing human/technology interfaces to the foreground of this study, the book discusses the ways that contemporary performance engages with experience, perception, and with making sense as processes that are embodied, situated, and relational within digital and digitally informed milieux.
Co-principal Investigator with Prof. Steve Purcell (YSJ), Yorkshire Innovation Fund, European Union, Research & Development Project, New Methods for Audience Engagement in Public Interactive Performance, £ 29,737 (October 2014 to August 2015).
Principal Investigator, Yorkshire Innovation Fund, European Union, Small Innovation Project, in collaboration with Kit Monkman, Participation, Generosity and Intermedial Theatres, £4,445 (January to March 2014).
Travel Bursary Award by International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR July 2013 Conference), £500 (February 2013).
Curriculum Enhancement Projects Funding awarded for the Digital Practices, Remote Learning and Assessment Project (York St John University), £ 2,800 (March 2012).
Postgraduate Travel Bursary Award by TaPRA (University of Leeds), £150 (September 2008).
