Updated Summer 2022
We are just coming to the end of our process with the Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre. It has been a lot of work and covid/life/the world has caused so many ups and downs. But we are proud of the eventual collection.
We are finishing off the journal articles from the Health and Wellbeing in Professional Wrestling project (funded by the British Academy). I can confirm that an exciting collaboration is now emerging off the back of it and we have the funding to put it into action. There will be an announcement in the Autumn term about this.
In April gave an invited paper as part of a symposium on Proxies (run by Dylan Mulvin of LSE and Annette Hill of Lund). After having so much fun with bodybuilding last year, Conor Heffernan and I are collaborating on a paper thinking about proxies in wrestling and how a study of wrestling might make us think about a range of contemporary proxies in different ways. We've submitted our funding bid on the history of strongman competition (with Conor Heffernan and Broderick Chow) and we now await the result. I'm also throwing in a number of applications to fund a new project called Flex which is a transdisciplinary history of muscularity. The paper I delivered last year at the British Society for Sports History conference is now an article for a special edition of Performance Research on blood. I am also in the process of writing two new books chapters: one on Seats for a wonderful, exciting book on 'Theatre Things' and one on the intersections of British theatre and the European avant-garde with a particular focus on the body for a terrific Routledge behemoth on the history of British theatre.
In October I will be heading off to the University of Malta to take up a Visiting Professorship. I am so excited to meet the staff and students there. I also hope to sneak in a couple of boat trips and peaceful walks around Valetta which I remember as a wonderful little city.
I am also co-leading the Loughborough participation in the Arts, Culture and Heritage theme for the new Civic Agreement between the University of Leicester, De Montfort University and Loughborough University. We had an amazing, inspiring launch a couple of months ago and I am really excited to discover new ways to work together to promote the arts in Leicestershire and Rutland.
As I continue to work with our students, fulfil a number of leadership roles within our School, and just try to be a supportive colleague, I am inspired by Maya Angelou's advice: "Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud". May we be rainbows in people's clouds in 2022...
We are just coming to the end of our process with the Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre. It has been a lot of work and covid/life/the world has caused so many ups and downs. But we are proud of the eventual collection.
We are finishing off the journal articles from the Health and Wellbeing in Professional Wrestling project (funded by the British Academy). I can confirm that an exciting collaboration is now emerging off the back of it and we have the funding to put it into action. There will be an announcement in the Autumn term about this.
In April gave an invited paper as part of a symposium on Proxies (run by Dylan Mulvin of LSE and Annette Hill of Lund). After having so much fun with bodybuilding last year, Conor Heffernan and I are collaborating on a paper thinking about proxies in wrestling and how a study of wrestling might make us think about a range of contemporary proxies in different ways. We've submitted our funding bid on the history of strongman competition (with Conor Heffernan and Broderick Chow) and we now await the result. I'm also throwing in a number of applications to fund a new project called Flex which is a transdisciplinary history of muscularity. The paper I delivered last year at the British Society for Sports History conference is now an article for a special edition of Performance Research on blood. I am also in the process of writing two new books chapters: one on Seats for a wonderful, exciting book on 'Theatre Things' and one on the intersections of British theatre and the European avant-garde with a particular focus on the body for a terrific Routledge behemoth on the history of British theatre.
In October I will be heading off to the University of Malta to take up a Visiting Professorship. I am so excited to meet the staff and students there. I also hope to sneak in a couple of boat trips and peaceful walks around Valetta which I remember as a wonderful little city.
I am also co-leading the Loughborough participation in the Arts, Culture and Heritage theme for the new Civic Agreement between the University of Leicester, De Montfort University and Loughborough University. We had an amazing, inspiring launch a couple of months ago and I am really excited to discover new ways to work together to promote the arts in Leicestershire and Rutland.
As I continue to work with our students, fulfil a number of leadership roles within our School, and just try to be a supportive colleague, I am inspired by Maya Angelou's advice: "Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud". May we be rainbows in people's clouds in 2022...
