XClose

Arts Sciences

Menu

Cultural Understanding

Dr Chiara Amini

Find out more about Chiara's research on her UCL Profiles page

Dr Ali Baybutt

I work as an artist, somatic movement educator and researcher. With a background in dance, my work spirals between artistic, pedagogical and theoretical concerns around movement and space: cellular, social, political. Here is a sample of projects spanning collaborative pedagogy, writing on somatic movement education, choreography, festival curation, and working conditions in dance in Europe.

Ongoing

  • aArtistic/pedagogical research project engaging with somatic sound practices for musicians with Play As We Are (Maya Felixbrot and Alex Welch, with Moving Strings, Netherlands) https://playasyouare.weebly.com
  • Dramaturgy for choreographer/multi-disciplinary artist Tania Soubry (Belgium/Luxembourg). Latest project 'Terre rouge: I listen with you', southern Luxembourg.

Forthcoming:

Recent:

  • Audio interview mostly about my first monograph, 'Contemporary Dance Festivals in the Former Yugoslav Space: (in)dependent scenes' (2023, Taylor and Francis) with ResDance, 2024 https://open.spotify.com/episode/3vUpbK32knOKrkoWZWgTTL?si=LC8jH94WTXWys...
  • I held a discussion with contributors and London-based independent festival-makers at the Insititute of Advanced Studies in late Spring 2024 with support from UASc and will be presenting my book at CoFestival, Ljubljana, November 2024.
  • Research for the European Dance Development Network on 'Equity in Working Conditions in Dance', 2023 https://www.ednetwork.eu/news/publication-edn-2023

Find out more about Ali's research on her UCL Profiles page.

Dr Alfonso Borragán

My art practice explores and activates relational processes, physical and metaphysical, with the earth, usually though collective processes and collective actions. My projects revolve around notions of community, social behaviour and ritual action performed by the community. For the last 12 years, I have working about the human ingestion of stones as a relational action with the earth.

Ongoing research:

  • Goalito: Research Fellowship at the French Academy in Madrid. This research is an exploration about the ingestion, relational poetics and the symbolical and metabolical incorporation of bezoar stones in our organism. It focuses on the pharmacological and magical use of these stones by the Spanish elites during the 16th and 17th century.
  • Goalito: Research Residency at AiR351 in Lisbon to work on the ingestion of bezoar stones by the Royal Family, Aristocracy and Clergy in Portugal during the 16th and 17th century.
  • Distomago; exhibition at Casa de Velázquez in Madrid; a performative installation that connects the animal stomach and the human stomach.
  • Daguerrolito EXP: exhibition at Museo del Traje in Madrid; a video installation about the collective action ingestion of photosensitive silver grains, carried out in 2017.
  • Susto al Susto: Book published by A-Edicions at La Paz. The book contains the voices of the researches during the collective process developed in Bolivia between 2021 and 2023. 
  • Halito: Screening and presentation of the film at Zumzeig Cinemas with the musician Simon William and Malena Rodriguez.
  • Trans-Becoming: Lecture at CAC-Torres Vedras with the researcher and curator Ainhoa Gonzalez.
  • Geological Digestion: Performative action at Galerias MIRA in Porto with the artist Martin Howse.

Some recent research:

  • En Boca Piedra: Conversation about the ingestion of stones with Yuri Tuma. Published at Compost Reader Vol. II, Cthulhu Books.
  • Re·generation · Bucarolito: Essay about the process held in Florida on ingestion of clay. Published at Visual Ethnography Journal, University of Basilicata.
  • Halito: Film about the ingestion of salt. Published and hosted by HAMACA.
  • Resonancia Volcánica: Essay written with Santiago Reyes and Natalia Pardo about the process held in Itataia on inhabiting a Volcano. Published at Nosotros los Andes, University of Leeds Press.
  • Entomosyn · Proto-poda: Exhibition about a possible human transformation in millipede. Hosted at the Natural Science Museum of Granollers as part of Panoramic Festival.
  • Body Stones and Other Bodies: Series of podcasts published at UCL Minds.

Find out more about alfonso's research on his UCL Profiles page.

Dr Nicole Brown

I conceptualise my work as sitting on the cusp of practice/teaching/research, thereby emphasising that through thinking-doing-being each area of expertise intersects with and impacts on another. I therefore work with participants to generate, analyse and disseminate data using arts-based and creative methods, but I also engage in my own creative work. In that sense, my practices as a fiction writer, poet, and educator as well as my activist work in response to, on the back of and as research represent an extension of her conceptualisation of research practice.

My most recent project "Disclosure dances in doctoral education" explored the lived experience of doctoral researchers with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and/or neurodivergences. In this Embodied Inquiry participants were asked to share photographs of their handbags, rucksacks, and day bags. My premise was that the contents of our bags will visibly demonstrate our lived experiences, and that by asking disabled, chronically ill, and/or neurodivergent doctoral researchers to share the contents of their bags, we can gain a glimpse into the reality of what it means to navigate disclosure in doctoral education.

I have written about some lessons learned about sharing photographs for the Photovoice Worldwide newsletter:  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/step-5-option-choose-photos-sharing-hidden-power-inherent-6wgce/

Find out more about Nicole's research on her UCL Profiles page.

Dr Ranjita Dhital

Alcohol causes around 3.3 million deaths annually, representing 6% of annual global mortality (WHO, 2018).  In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) such as Nepal, morbidity and mortality risks are greater than in higher-income countries. This is largely due to poverty and poor access to care. My Alcohol Co-design and Community Engagement (ACE) study aims to creatively engage with diverse communities to understand their experiences and ideas around cultural and community assets to reduce alcohol-related harm (funded by GCRF, AHRC Knowledge Exchange and UASc Research Dept fund).

We conducted sensory ethnographic work in Patan, near Kathmandu (Nepal), an area renowned for its rich cultural heritage. We also hosted a Community Festival (August 2024) and a Creative Health Exhibition at a contemporary art gallery (Nov 2024) which brought together diverse communities, artists, and stakeholders to enrich our study findings. Our interdisciplinary team from Nepal and the UK is co-producing the first known Critical Realist Review to examine a range of evidence, to reduce alcohol harm. This work will support the Nepali Government, WHO Nepal, and other organisations to reduce alcohol harm and strengthen their implementation roadmap, in line with WHO’s Global Alcohol Action Plan 2022–2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Findings from this work will also support further research in this area.

More information about my Creative Global Health research:
-    Study website: Creative Health Nepal  
-    AHRC Knowledge Exchange study summary: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/arts-humanities/case-studies/2024/sep/interdisciplinarity-research-project-using-creative-approaches-reduce-alcohol
-    Dhital R. Guest Editorial: A new paradigm for a creative global health. Perspectives in Public Health. 2024;144(5):266-267. doi:10.1177/17579139241291961 Link to full Special Issue content https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/rshi/144/5 (Open Access).

Find out more about Ranjita’s research on her UCL Profiles page.

Sarajh Ferner

I am interested in how young British Muslims and young British Jews think and speak about Israel, Palestine and the Holocaust.

My research will immerse young British Jewish and Muslim co-producers/enquirers in different kinds of thinking (creative, collaborative, critical and caring) to investigate Israel, Palestine and the Holocaust as entities, distant geographically and in time, but inextricably intertwined with their everyday lives and formative experiences.  This research views listening to children’s ideas and opinions on matters that affect them as central to ideas of participation, social justice, democratic practice and agency.  My research centralises children’s meaning-making and validates children’s voice and agency.

The design of my research is focused on the creation and curation of a cache of objects, stories and artefacts by British Jewish and Muslim co-producers/researchers/experts, including myself, with some of these arising specifically from my own (auto-ethnographic) back story. This research acknowledges objects, stories and artefacts as carriers of complex visual, material, cultural and social meanings generating multiple narratives and interpretations.

As a working teacher with twenty years experience in the classroom, the opportunity arises for me in addition, to combine a range of research methods with my pedagogic expertise in facilitating Socratic conversations using the pedagogy known as Philosophy for Children (P4C).  The use of P4C as an experimental research method requires me to engage with the paradox of being at the self-same time an authority figure (a teacher) and facilitator, embracing both interdisciplinary, inclusive, participatory research methods and P4C which mirrors them; in being an inclusive and democratic pedagogy; bucking those trends in mainstream education which tend to position children as passive acquirers of knowledge, imparted mainly through direct instruction.

Find out more about Sarah's research on her UCL Profiles page.

Dr Dai George

Dai George recently published How to Think Like a Poet (Bloomsbury, 2024), a book of poetry criticism and biographical writing aimed at the general reader. Through 24 short chapters, it surveys the global poetry canon and asks what we can learn about the way that poets think. The research involved a lot of reading poetry and poets’ biographies (as one would expect!) alongside broader historiography to situate the poets in question. Currently Dai is working on his second novel – a contemporary dark comedy set in South Wales – and beginning to think about a poetry project titled Beyond Mercy. This might engage multidisciplinary perspectives to explore the possibilities (and limits) of mercy in contemporary society.

Find out more about Dai's research on his UCL Profiles page.

Clare Lewis

With a range of experience across various sectors and disciplines, I am interested in the history and development of disciplines in tertiary education. My research is in the history of archaeology where I draw from work in the history of sciences. My focus on the history of Egyptology as an academic discipline and its development in this country. I am mindful of the colonial legacies of Egyptology in my examinations of the myriad of connections, compunctions and intentions surrounding its development since its inception in this country in the late nineteenth century. I have recently co-authored and co-edited Life Writing in the History of Archaeology: Critical Perspectives (UCL Press).

Find out more about Clare's research on her UCL Profiles page.

Carolina Moore

Find out more about Carolina's research on her UCL Profiles page.

Dr Kirstin Smith

For several years, I've been researching casting—the process by which actors are selected for roles—in order to explore and historicise how bodies, identities, characters and actors are expected to manifest and mean on stage, on film, in a production process, and in social life. I've written about casting through the lens of labour, in relation to decolonisation and anti-racism, sexual exploitation, and technology, and I am currently writing a history of the audition.

This forthcoming special issue of Studies in Theatre and Performance is co-edited with Dr Sara Reimers (University of Bristol) whose research is focused on aesthetic labour. The issue builds upon a symposium at the University of East Anglia which had contributions from scholars, artists and activists, including Equity UK, Middle East North Africa Arts, casting director Isabella Odoffin, and director/dramaturg Emma Jude Harris. The issue features an artist contribution, an artist roundtable, reviews, and articles analysing the labour, reception and technologies of casting in relation to gender, race, and colonialism.

Find out more about Kirstin's research on her UCL Profiles page.

Dr Temenuga Trifonova

I am currently finishing my seventh book, Precarity in Western European Cinema, in which I explore the genre and stylistic features of ‘the new European cinema of precarity’, the political and social values embodied in it, and the ways in which these films stage class conflict and class struggle. Through my analysis of cinematic representations of the dramatic recalibrations in labor relations under neoliberalism, from the precarization of labor and zero-hour contracts to ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘quiet firing’, I aim to find out whether ‘the new European cinema of precarity’ lends validity to Guy Standing’s designation of the precariat as ‘the new dangerous class’. The heterogeneity of the concept of precarity as a continuum of insecure conditions is reflected in the heterogeneity of the films that make up the new European cinema of precarity. What brings them together is their attentiveness to the affective experience of precarity, which ranges from social alienation through mental and nervous breakdown to imposterism.

The book is slated for publication by Amsterdam University Press in June/July 2025.

In 2023 I was Stiftung Südtiroler Sparkasse Global Fellow at EURAC Research in Bolzano. Some of the work I did there can be accessed here: https://www.eurac.edu/en/blogs/imagining-futures/fake-it-till-you-make-it-inventing-the-neoliberal-self

In summer 2025 I will be Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of Graz within the Field of Excellence Dimensions of Europe: https://dimensions-of-europe.uni-graz.at/en/

Find out more about Temenuga's research on her UCL Profiles page.

Sara Wingate Gray

My research and creative praxes encompass a wide range of academic domains and disciplines, including live art and performance, creative and critical writing, information studies, reading and the history of the book, for example. This means that much of my research is fundamentally interdisciplinary, though my particular research and creative praxis may be understood as centred around the intersection of conceptions of power and information.

I am currently involved in the following research/praxis-based projects, some of which are new and some of which are long term and continuous:

Live art performance project: The Itinerant Poetry Library

Using proximity technology to share digital content in physical spaces: LibraryWall

With departmental colleague, Professor Wendy Sims-Schouten, working together on an interdisciplinary project providing a new lens through which to view childhood resilience, in the context of journeys of migration and forced displacement, drawing on history, art, culture, sociology, and psychology. The project aims to examine understandings of causal factors and mechanisms for childhood resilience that operate at a range of disciplines and historic timescales, centralising marginalised and displaced children’s voices associated with war, colonial legacies and poverty. See our recent publication here.

With departmental colleague, Dr François Sicard, working together on an interdisciplinary project examining trust, opacity and literacy in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI).