Staff Profile
Professor Matthew Reason
Professor of Theatre and Director of Institute for Social Justice
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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.
- Email – m.reason@yorksj.ac.uk
- Phone – 01904 876 770
- Postgraduate Research Supervisor
Further information
Monographs
Reason, M The Young Audience: Exploring and Enhancing Children’s Experiences of Theatre. Stoke: Trentham Books/IOE Press. 2010
Reason, M Documentation, Disappearance and the Representation of Live Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 2006
Edited Collections
Eds. Reason & Rowe Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact Across Theatre, Music and Art. Bloomsbury Methuen. 2017
Eds. Reason & Lindelof Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance Routledge. 2017
Eds. Reason & Sedgman Theatre Audiences. Special issue of Participations 12.1. 2015
Eds. Reason & Reynolds Kinesthetic Empathy: Creative and Cultural Contexts, Intellect 2012
Eds. Reason & Reynolds Screen Dance Audiences. Special Issue of Participations 7.2. 2010
Peer-review journal articles
Reason, M Representing Soldiers to Soldiers through Dance: Authenticity, Theatricality and Witnessing the Pain of Others, Dance Research Journal. 49:2. pp 79-95. 2017
Reason M & Heinemeyer C ‘Storytelling, Story-retelling, Storyknowing: Towards a Participatory Practice of Storytelling’, RiDE: the Journal of Applied theatre and Performance. 21.4.pp 558-73 2016
Reason, M ‘Archive, Empathy, Memory: The Resurrection of Joyce Reason’, Memory Connection. 2.1. 2016
Reason, Jola, Kay, Reynolds, Kauppi, Grobras, Tohka & Pollick ‘Spectators’ Aesthetic Experience of Sound and Movement in Dance Performance: A Transdisciplinary Investigation’, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 10.1. pp. 42-55. 2016
Reason, M, ‘Writing the Embodied Experience: Ekphrastic and Creative Writing as Audience Research’, Critical Stages 7. n.p. 2012
Reason & Reynolds ‘Kinesthetic and related Pleasures: Exploring audience responses to watching live dance’, Dance Research Journal 42(2) (pp 49-75) 2010
Reason, M ‘Watching Dance, Drawing the Experience and Visual Knowledge’ Forum for Modern Language Studies 46 (4) (pp 391-414) 2010
Reason, M ‘Asking the Audience: Audience research and the experience of theatre’, About Performance No 10 (pp 15-34) 2010
Reason, M ‘Interpreting Children’s Responses to Puppets in Live Theatre: Did you watch the man or did you watch the goose?’, New Theatre Quarterly 24 (pp 337-354). 2008
Reason, M ‘Thinking Theatre: Enhancing Children’s Theatrical Experiences Through Philosophical Enquiry’, Childhood and Philosophy 4: 7 2008
Reason, M & García, B. ‘Approaches to the Newspaper Archive: Content Analysis and Press Coverage of Glasgow’s Year of Culture’, Media, Culture & Society 29:2 (pp 304-331). 2007
Reason, M ‘Audience’, Performance Research Lexicon 11:3 (pp 7-10). (Lexicon issue also published in German in conjunction with documenta 12 magazines, in April 2007) 2006
Reason, M ‘Young Audience and Live Theatre, Part 1: Methods, Participation and Memory in Audience Research’ Studies in Theatre and Performance 26:2 (pp 129-145) 2006
Reason, M ‘Young Audience and Live Theatre, Part 2: Perceptions of Liveness in Performance’, Studies in Theatre and Performance 26:3 (pp 221-241). 2006
Reason, M ‘Glasgow’s Year of Culture and discourses of cultural policy on the cusp of globalisation’, Contemporary Theatre Review 16:1 (pp 73-85). 2006
Reason, M ‘Still Moving: The Revelation or Representation of Dance in Still Photography’, Dance Research Journal 35:2 & 36:2 (pp 43-67). 2004
Reason, M ‘Theatre Audiences and Perceptions of “Liveness” in Performance’, Participations 1:2. 2004
Reason, M ‘Archive or Memory?: The Detritus of Live Performance’, New Theatre Quarterly 19:1 (pp 82-9). 2003
Reason, M ‘Writing the Olfactory in the Live‑Performance Review’ Performance Research 8:3 (pp 73-84). 2003
Book Chapters
Reason, M ‘Ways of Watching: Aesthetics / Audiences / Learning Disabilities / Theatres’. In Routledge Handbook of Disability Arts, Culture and Media. Ed. Bree Hadley and Donna McDonald. Routledge. Forthcoming 2019
Reason, M ‘Participatory Audiencing and the Committed Return’. In Commit Yourself! Strategies of Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances. Ed. Doris Kolesch, Theresa Schütz and Sophie Nikoleit. Routledge. Forthcoming 2019
Reason, M ‘What Makes a Theatre Goer? Habitus, Identity and Interest Development in Adolescent Audiences to Shakespeare’. In Shakespeare: Actors and Audience. Ed F. Banks. Arden Shakespeare. Forthcoming 2018
Reason, M ‘Drawing’, in Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods. Ed Lury et al. Routledge. Forthcoming 2018
Reason, M ‘Conversation and Criticism: Audiences and Unfinished Critical Thinking’, in Theatre Criticism: Changing Landscapes. Ed. D. Radosavljević. Bloomsbury Methuen. pp 236-54. 2016
Grosbras, Reason, Tan, Kay & Pollick ‘Subjective and Neurophysiological Perspective on Emotion Perception in Dance’, in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing. Eds. Karkou, Oliver & Lycouris. pp 57-75. 2016
Jola & Reason ‘Audiences’ Experience of Proximity and Co-Presence in Live Dance Performance’, in Theatre and Cognitive Neuroscience. Ed. Falletti, Sofia & Jacono. Bloomsbury Methuen. pp 75-92. 2016
Reason, M ‘The Longer Experience: Theatre for Young Audiences and Enhancing Engagement’, in The Audience Experience: A Critical Response to the Intrinsic Needs of Audiences in the Performing Arts. Eds. Radbourne, Glow and Johanson. Intellect. pp 97-111. 2013
Reason, Reynolds, Grosbras & Pollick ‘Researching Dance Across Disciplinary Paradigms: A Reflective Discussion of the Watching Dance Project’, in Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being. Ed. N. Shaughnessy. Methuen. pp 39-56. 2013
Reason, M ‘The Possibility of Theatre for Children’ in Theatre for Young Audiences: A Critical Handbook, Ed. Karian Schuitema and Tom Maguire. Trentham. pp 23-34. 2013
Reason, M & Nash, C ‘A Moment in Time: Kinesthetic empathy and photography’ in Kinesthetic Empathy: Creative and Cultural Contexts, Ed Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason. Intellect. pp 239-256. 2012
Reason, M ‘Still Moving: The Revelation or Representation of Dance in Still Photography’, in Imaging dance. Visual Representations of Dancers and Dancing, Ed.Barbara Sparti and Judy Van Zile. Georg Olms Verlag: Hildesheim, Germany. pp 275-201 2011
Reason, Dorey-Richmond, Gray & Walker ‘Making Performance within the Institution: Documentation, Reflection and Production’, in Hidden Archives ed. Glen McGillivray. Amsterdam: Peter Lang. pp 149-171. 2011
Reason, M ‘Cartoons and the Comic Exposure of the City of Culture’, Chapter in Urban Mindscapes of Europe, European Studies Series 23. Ed. G. Weiss‑Sussex and F. Bianchini. Rodopi. pp 176-196. 2006
