I am founding director of the Institute for Social Justice, which works across the University to facilitate social justice research, projects and partnerships that help us to promote a fairer society. My particular passion is developing a participatory and co-productive research culture within the University. At its core the Institute seeks to workwith people, with partners and with communities in a manner that sees participation, implementation and change as vital parts of its mission.
My own research focuses on participatory research in the arts, including in the context of learning disabilities and autism, theatre for children, liveness, performance documentation and political performance. I have a particular interest in the question of what it is possible to know about the audience experience of performance and on several project have used creative methodologies (such as drawing or creative writing) to explore spectators’ affective, embodied and reflective responses to theatre and dance.
I am currently leading “I’m Me”, an AHRC funded research project working with a network of learning disability arts organisations to explore themes relating to identity, representation and voice. Other recent publications have explored prison and military audiences, arts activism, drawing as research methodology and a whole lot more.
