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Professor Heike Roms

Professor in Theatre and Performance

4581

01392724581

Director of Global Engagement, Department Communications, Drama and Film

I joined the University of Exeter in 2017 after twelve years at Aberystwyth University, where I was a core member of the team that made Aberystwyth an internationally renowned centre for Performance Studies. [see tab: Biography]

I have published widely on contemporary performance practice, the history of performance art in a British context, performance historiography and archiving, performance and landscape, and performance as a mode of knowledge formation and dissemination.

For over a decade, the focus of my research has been on the history and historiography of performance art in the 1960s and 1970s. This research was funded by a Large Research Grant from the British Arts and Humanities Research Council AHRC (2009-2011) and won the UK’s Theatre and Performance Research Association TaPRA David Bradby Award for Outstanding Research in International Theatre and Performance 2011. I am currently working on a book arising from the enquiry with the working title When Yoko Ono did not come to Wales - Locating the early history of Performance Art.

Current and future projects include research on the participation of children in experimental performance work of the 1960s and 1970s and its relationship to child activism in the period (The Avant-garde is Child's Play); a project on sound documents of performance art (Toward an Aural History of Performance Art); and a joint project (with Professor Gavin Butt, Northumbria University) on the development of performance art in the context of art schools in the UK (Live Class: Performance and the Art School). [for additional research interests see: Research]

I am a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA); a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA); and a member of the AHRC Peer Review College - Academic (2020-2023). I was an Arts Associate (formerly National Advisor) to the Arts Council of Wales until recently, and I serve on the board of several arts organisations and academic journals.

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Postal address: Professor Heike Roms, Drama, University of Exeter, Thornlea, New North Road, Exeter EX4 4LA, UK

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office hours Term 2 (2023-2024): https://calendly.com/heikeroms/officehour

Research interests

1. Performance art history, historiography, archiving...:

* The histories of performance art in the 1960s and 1970s; especially in Wales and the UK (current project: What's Welsh for Performance? Locating the early history of performance art, 1965–1979)

* Performance and its relationship to documentation, archiving and historiography

* Sonic historiographies of performance; sound documents of performance art (current project: An Aural History of Performance Art)

* The performance of oral history and oral histories of performance (current project: The Performance of Oral Futures)

* Intermedial performance work in the 1960s and 1970s, especially the work of Ian Breakwell

 

2. Performance and the 'pedagogical turn'...:

* Performance art's pedagogical histories; and the development of performance and live art in the context of art schools in the UK (current project: Live Class: Performance and the Art School, with Professor Gavin Butt, Northumbria University)

* Children and performance art, especially the involvement of children in the performances of Happenings and Fluxus in the 1960s (current project: The Avant-garde is Child's Play)

* Children, avant-garde art, alternative education and child activism 1960s-2020s, with Dr Adele Senior, Leeds Beckett University. Participation in University of Exeter's Child & Young People's Health and Wellbeing Research Network.

 

3. Performance and conceptions of the future...:

* The performance of oral history and oral histories of performance (current project: The Performance of Oral Futures)

* Performing Scenarios: Playing (with) the Future

 

4. Performance and Big Data...:

* The performance and performativity of diagrams and other forms of data visualization (current project: Performing Data)

 

I also have an ongoing interest in:

* Disciplinary histories of Performance Studies

* The practices and politics of citation

* Performance and waste; the materialist histories of Happenings

* Intermedial performance work in the 1960s and 1970s, especially the work of Ian Breakwell

 

I have published widely on the history and historiography of performance art; on performance and archiving; on performance and landscape; on performance as a mode of knowledge formation; and on a number of contemporary performance makers, including essays on Acco Theatre Centre (Israel), Goat Island (US), Brith Gof, Eddie Ladd and Simon Whitehead (Wales).

My research has been supported by the AHRC (Large Research Grant, Network grants, Collaborative Doctoral awards), Sir David Hughes Parry awards, University of Wales Aberystwyth Research Fund and Arts Council of Wales/ National Lottery.

My major enquiry into the history of performance art in Wales, What’s Welsh for Performance? Beth yw ‘performance’ yn Gymraeg?, was funded by a Large Research Grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2009-2011) and won the TaPRA David Bradby Award for Outstanding Research in International Theatre and Performance 2011. I am currently writing a book on the history of performance art in the 1960s and 1970s, tentatively entitled When Yoko Ono did not come to Wales: Locating the history of performance art.

I am co-editor (with Maaike Bleeker, Utrecht; Adrian Kear, Aberystwyth; Joe Kelleher, Roehampton) of a book series for Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, entitled Thinking through Theatre thinkingthroughtheatrebookseries.wordpress.com

I am the co-founder and co-convenor (with Dr Dror Harari, Tel Aviv University) of Networking the Histories of Performance Art, an international research group that currently involves 19 researchers from 10 European countries.

Research supervision

I have supervised 13 PhD projects to successful completion (many of them funded by scholarships, including 2 projects supported by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award), on subjects such as the performance lecture, journeys as aesthetic practice, the use of GPS in performance, located art practice, the performance of lament, digital notation, queer approaches to archiving, curating historical performance art in museums and the history of alternative theatre in the UK. I have examined over 30 PhDs, including for Murdoch University and Deakin University (both Australia) and the universities of Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Leeds Beckett, Plymouth, Queen Mary University of London, Reading, Roehampton, Royal Holloway, South Wales, Ulster, Wales Trinity Saint David, Warwick, West of England, Arts University Bournemouth, Central School of Speech and Drama, Bartlett School of Architecture and Chelsea College of Art.

I welcome applications from prospective research students in any area of my research expertise (including practice-based research). I am especially happy to consider working with candidates with interests in the history and historiography of performance art and related experimental practices; oral history and performance; teaching performance; space and identity in contemporary performance; and related areas

Research students

I am currently supervising the following doctoral students:

- Mie Al-Missned, 'Ritual performativity in transnational networks of contemporary art' (submitted and awaiting examination)

- Manal Alghamdi, ‘Performing Mediatized Reading Aloud to Children in the UK’ (submitted and awaiting examination)

- Lin Chen, ‘Comparative analysis of Framing in Theatre/Performance Studies’ (2nd supervisor) (submitted and awaiting examination)

- Verena Cornwall, ‘The transformation of circus: a study into the present situation of the circus industry’ (2nd supervisor)

- Chinasa Vivia Ezugha, 'Glossolalia (Speaking in Tongues): Performing the Unknown' (co-supervising with Dr Konstantinos Thomaidis)

- Aldith Gauci,‘Jola Masquerades as Ecoperformance’

- Samantha Sully, 'The Presentation and Representation of Disabled Persons within Video Games and the Video Game Community'

Past supervised students:

- Sophia Belasco New, ‘Transforming personal daily GPS data through performances: movement, memory and time’; PhD by Publication; successfully defended 2021. website

- Judit Bodor, ‘Exhibiting The Ivor Davies Archive of Destruction in Art: an exploration of curating historical performance art in the Museum’; AHRC-CDA scholarship with Amgueddfa Cymru National Museum Wales; successfully defended 2018.

- Julie Bomber, ‘Designing Experience: locating the experimental aesthetics within digital performance, game, music and virtual spaces’; departmental PhD scholarship; successfully defended 2010.

- Mike Brookes, ‘On a clear day you can see for ever: mediation as form and dramaturgy in located performance’; PhD by publication; successfully defended 2015.

- Marios Chatziprokopiou, ‘Displaced Laments: Performing Mourning and Exile in Contemporary Athens, Greece’; Aberystwyth University Doctoral Career Development scholarship; successfully defended 2017.

- Anna Kiernan, 'Exploring the theory and practice(s) of literary media in a changing publishing marketplace'; PhD by Publication; successfully defended 2024.

- Reuben Knutson, ‘The Preseli Hills Transcended: historiography and art practices’; EU-KESS Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarship; successfully defended 2016.

- Daniel Ladnar, ‘The Lecture Performance : Contexts of Lecturing and Performing’; Aberystwyth University APRS scholarship; successfully defended 2014.

- Esther Pilkington, ‘The journey as aesthetic practice in contemporary performance’; AHRC & Aberystwyth University PhD scholarships; successfully defended 2011.

- Kerrie Reading, ‘Understanding the Contemporary Value of Past Approaches to Producing Theatre: Toward a Tripartite Approach to Venue – Performance – Document’; AHRC-CDA scholarship with Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff; successfully defended 2017.

- Louise Ritchie, ‘Digital notation: New approaches to physical theatre and its documents’; practice-based; AHRC PhD scholarship; successfully defended 2012.

- Lotta Svinhufvud, ‘Kotkaniemi: Family, kinship and personal narrative’; practice-based; departmental PhD scholarship; successfully defended 2008.

- James Woolley, ‘Toward a Queer Archive of Performance’; Aberystwyth University Vice-Chancellor scholarship; successfully defended 2017.

Research through practice

Recent practice-led research projects:

- “Yr Ymarferiadur – What’s Welsh for Live Art?”, with Gareth Llŷr Evans, commissioned by Chapter; Experimentica 17, Chapter, Cardiff, March 2017 https://ymarferiadur.net/

- “Silent Explosion: Ivor Davies and Destruction in Art”, 14 November 2015 – 20 March 2016; Amgueddfa Cymru / National Museum Wales, supported by AHRC; Colwinston Charitable Trust; Henry Moore Foundation [Research Advisor]

- Marking Time – a journey into Cardiff’s performance pasts, with Mike Pearson; commissioned by Chapter; Experimentica 13 2013, Chapter Cardiff 9 November 2011

- “The lunatics are on the loose …”– European Fluxus Festivals 1962–1977 – Exhibitions, Conferences, Actions, Publications, touring European venues since 2012, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Krakow, Madrid, Paris, Poznan, Vilnius, Wiesbaden, etc., Funded by Haupstadtkulturfonds Berlin, Goethe Institute [Member of Curatorial Team] website

External impact and engagement

I have been involved in many public engagement activities nationally and internationally in connection with my research on the history of performance art, among them collaborations with major art institutions in Wales (National Museum, Arts Council of Wales, Chapter Arts Centre); consultations for the Tate, the Vale of Glamorgan Council, the National Eisteddfod and BBC Wales; and public lectures at leading national and international venues, festivals and exhibitions. 

I have served on the boards of many arts organisations (currently Cardiff Dance Festival), and I regularly mentor artists at different stages in their career. I was appointed a National Advisor to the Arts Council of Wales (ACW) in 2010, and became an Arts Associate for ACW in 2019. I was elected Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in 2009. My public engagement work was submitted as an Impact Case Study to REF2014. 

For more information please visit: www.performance-wales.org

I am also the Director of Research and the Director of Impact for the Department of Drama.

Contribution to discipline

I have a strong commitment to my field, performance studies. In have served twice (2001-2004, 2013-2018) on the Board of Directors for PSi Performance Studies international, the field’s worldwide association for performance scholars and artists, which I helped found in 1998, and I am an active member of other scholarly associations (TaPRA, IFTR, Oral History Society). I have organized and/or convened thirteen international and national conferences and symposia; and I currently sit on several editorial boards for journals (Contemporary Theatre Review, GPS, Performance Paradigm, Theatre Survey, and Inter) and advisory boards for research projects and doctoral training programmes in the UK, Germany, Finland and Portugal. I regularly review grant applications for various European funding bodies, provide peer reviews for many publishers and journals and review promotions applications for universities in the UK, Germany and Finland.

I am also a member of the AHRC Peer Review College - Academic (2020-2023).

A long-term enquiry of mine has been devoted to the disciplinary formation of Performance Studies and has led to a major edited collection on the topic, Contesting Performance - Global Sites of Research (Palgrave 2010, with Jon McKenzie and C.J.W.L. Wee).

I am currently external examiner on the BA Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Sussex. I have served as external examiner for undergraduate programmes at Glasgow University, Leeds Met, Brunel University and Dartington College of Arts and for Masters at Dartington College of Arts and Queen Mary University of London.

Teaching

[office hours Term 2 - 2021: Mondays 5.00 - 6.00 pm; Wednesdays 1.00 - 2.00 pm. All meetings will take place on TEAMS. Please book your slot here: https://calendly.com/heikeroms/officehour]

Modules taught

Biography

Before joining the University of Exeter in 2017, I was Professor of Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University (2005-2017) and Lecturer in Theatre and Media Drama at Glamorgan University (2002-2005). I received my PhD in 2001 from the University of Wales Aberystwyth, following a Masters (Magister Artium M.A.) in Literature, German philology and Musicology from Hamburg University. Between 1985 and 1995 I worked for various theatre organisations in Germany, as dramaturg, production manager and head of press and publicity for organisations such as the Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg, the Internationales Sommertheater Festival Hamburg and the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen. Following this, I worked for three years as research administrator for the University of Wales to help establish Performance Studies international, the main membership association in the field.

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