I am a writer, critic and academic working in the fields of contemporary performance and Live Art. My areas of research include experimental criticism, writing as performance, feminist performance and migration, with a focus on Eastern European diasporic culture. I am also interested in activist and political performance and Live Art. I have a longstanding interest in examining the politics involved in the critical act, placing emphasis on criticism as a mode of discursive, political engagement with culture, as well as a form of creative practice. I was a Royal Holloway and Bedford Excellence scholar at Royal Holloway, University of London, where I completed my doctoral project Criticism as a Political Event: the emergence of performance criticism in the UK between 2007-2016 (monograph forthcoming).
I co-host Something Other and the Department of Feminist Conversations with Mary Paterson and Maddy Costa.
I have explored live writing as a critical form through collaborations with performance space, Steakhouse Live , Forced Entertainment and Spill Festival, where I have been leading SPILL Writing.
I am the co-founder of Writingshop, a collaboration that examines the changing landscapes and languages of contemporary dance and performance criticism through the framework of site-specific projects. Between 2009-2015 I developed the Institute of Critical Practice, a nomadic [non] organisation that explored the ways in which criticism currently manifests itself in contemporary performance as a mode of inquiry and production, strategy for visibility and practice of dissemination.
I am a founding member of Generative Constraints, a committee that practises open-ended collaborative research into art, politics, and theory. We experiment with processes and structures of criticism, performance, poetics, and writing. Our activities include organising conferences and public dialogues, teaching, making original creative works, as well as digital publishing and exhibition curation. Generative Constraints has received funding from the Faculty Initiative Fund and the Departments of English, Drama & Theatre, Media Arts, and Music at Royal Holloway, University of London; practice research unit at Kingston University; and Heritage Arts Company; and is currently funded by the Creativity Theme Interdisciplinary Initiative at Royal Holloway, University of London. Activities have included organising a conference at the Centre for Creative Collaboration on constraints in artistic practice; a performance at PolyPly 2014; Anti-Body: a series of workshops and a performance at the Vault Festival 2015.
I am currently a Lecturer in Performance Arts at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.