In 2019 I gained a PhD at Canterbury Christ Church University, where I was the first performing arts doctoral candidate, for which I was awarded a full scholarship.
My thesis ‘The gestural body in performance: a practice-based study of the perceptions of physicality and meaning through the invisibly disabled body’ (2019) explored how invisible disability impacts performance communication and interpretation.
Mooie Fee Photography
I employed phenomenological and auto-ethnographic methodologies, and drew on feminist practice, disability aesthetics, queer theory, embodied practice, live art, the privileging of the visual sense, and spectatorship to examine both the performer and audience’s experience of autobiographical live art across three case studies.
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In 2022, I held a one year research fellowship with the Institute of Cultural and Creative Industries at the University of Kent, for which I developed and delivered the slow conference, Elevate, bringing together my research interests, work in access and creative producing.
Publications
2025 ‘Elevate’ (article), Animated Winter edition, People Dancing
2023 ‘Elevate: Slow Conference’ (blog post), iCCi
2021 ‘Somatic work and independent training as an invisibly disabled performer’ (article), TDPT, Taylor and Francis Online (Open Access)
2019 ‘The gestural body in performance: a practice-based study of the perceptions of physicality and meaning through the invisibly disabled body’ (PhD thesis) CCCU Research Space Repository
Conference presentations
2023 ‘Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’ with ConfiDance, Kent Creative Conference: The Changing Cultural Landscape, Kent County Council
2021 ‘What does it mean to be accessible?’ with Moving Memory Dance Theatre, People Dancing Perspectives on Practice Open Sesame event
2019 ‘Chronic Time in Performance: the influence of chronic illness on notions of temporality and duration in performance art’, TaPRA annual symposium, University of Exeter 2019
2019 ‘Hidden Gifts’, Three Minute Thesis competition winner, CCCU Postgraduate Research Association annual conference
2019 ‘Revelations: Exploring Concepts of Visibility and Invisibility in Identity and Performance’, CCCU Practice Based Research Work in Progress Day
2019 ‘The Personal is Political: Using Autobiographical and Autoethnographic Methods to Share Personal Experience Through Research’, CCCU Faculty of Education conference
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Workshops
2023 ‘Making Your Work Accessible’ and ‘Write Your Own Access Rider’, Making More Waves Festival from Looping the Loop
2023 ‘Shifting the Weight of Access’ with 1 & ¾ Theatre, iCCi staff training
2017 ‘Screening My(Self): Reflections’, Canterbury Christ Church University
2016 ‘(In)Visible: Tell Me What You See’, Performing Risk Symposium, Canterbury Christ Church University