Welcome
My work articulates the space between research and arts practice. Engaging creative methodologies and movement based practices from theatre-making with the theoretical frameworks from performance studies, I experiment with different modes, attending and attuning to the interplay between self-other-enviroment, exploring various platforms to discover the best form to support, develop and communicate the research within a given project.
Interweaving my work as a Somatic Movement Educator along with creative arts practice and traditional scholarship results in a diverse practice as a writer and artist that integrates and cross-pollinates these realms.
My unique background and approach has resulted in arts-based research projects, installations, performance experiments, essays in international journals, book chapters and video essays. This experimental and creative approach continues to evolve and offer performance possibilities.
I work as a lecturer in the Department of Theatre, School of Film, Music & Theatre at University College Cork. From my background in theatre historiography, dramatic literature, theory, feminism and visual culture, my current research lives between embodied practices and theoretical understandings of performance. I explore this interdisciplinary terrain through the somatic practice of Body-Mind Centering (BMC) which offers an embodied ground to her theoretical and media based work. I completed my Somatic Movement Educator certification in BMC with Embody-Move Association in the UK with support from UCC and The Arts Council of Ireland. BMC has been highly influential and innovative in the field of Dance, part of my ongoing research is to examine how this mode can be applied to theatre and performance.
Recent Projects / Upcoming Work
Recent projects include medical humanities research with Living Well with the Dead collective, co-curation of Modes of Capture with Jenny Roche, UL, and Liz Roche, and collaborative visual arts installation projects.
Also, I have published on contemporary Irish performance and also on critical pedagogy in Text & Performance Quarterly and Transformations. I have co-edited a special edition of Performance Research "On Failure" (with Margaret Werry). In 2012 I began collaborating with then visiting Fulbright scholar, Michael Murphy, in developing a new intermedia performance, Sleepwalker, which was shown at the Triskel Development Centre, Cork and in further developments in Montana, USA 2013. Our work continues to develop collaborative intermedia projects including Terminal Moraine and more recently Falling Gardens
More recently I published in Theatre, Dance and Performer Training and have a book chapter in Unearthing Collections: Archives, Time and Ethics (in press with UDL Press) with Órla O'Donnovan. Previous work includes articles in Performance Research on practice-based research projects. In 2015-16 I organized transdisciplinary events: Performance & Politics & Protest and Bodystories in collaboration with Women's Studies. In 2018-19 I was part of the transdisciplinary team on the Wellcome Trust funded project "Living Well with the dead in Contemporary Ireland." I also edited a special edition of Performance Matters on "Performance & Bodie(s) Politic" (4:3 2018).