Updated February 2023
We are in the very final stages of 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 so proud of the eventual collection and so grateful to our patient contributors. The collection should hit the shelves in the Autumn.
We are finishing off the journal articles from the Health and Wellbeing in Professional Wrestling project (funded by the British Academy).
Last April I gave an invited paper as part of a symposium on Proxies (run by Dylan Mulvin of LSE and Annette Hill of Lund University). 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. So there will be a fair amount of proofs through the inbox this Spring.
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 in the very final stages of 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 so proud of the eventual collection and so grateful to our patient contributors. The collection should hit the shelves in the Autumn.
We are finishing off the journal articles from the Health and Wellbeing in Professional Wrestling project (funded by the British Academy).
Last April I gave an invited paper as part of a symposium on Proxies (run by Dylan Mulvin of LSE and Annette Hill of Lund University). 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. So there will be a fair amount of proofs through the inbox this Spring.
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...