I work internationally as a writer, teacher, and artist, having worked previously at King’s College London and UNSW Sydney. My academic research and my approaches to teaching are rooted in several decades of ongoing practice as a multidisciplinary artist in Europe, the USA, and so-called Australia, as well as prior work supporting activist movements and art for social change. I am committed to modes of research, learning, and making that are collaborative and experiential, alive in the thick of things and responsive to the complex and contested entanglements of diverse bodies, politics, histories, and alliances.

I hope to make bridges between scholarly research and creative and activist practices, in the belief that creative perspectives can shift not only what but also how we know, as well as whose knowledge and experience counts and is heard. To this end, I have organised several international gatherings that bring together artists and scholars; edited and co-authored with a diverse range of collaborators; facilitated creative and critical writing workshops in a range of contexts internationally; supervised numerous Honours, Masters, and PhD projects in creative practice as well as traditional research; and produced a major publication AGENCY: A Partial History of Live Art (winner of the 2021 TaPRA Editing Prize) in which I interviewed 35 artists from around the world on the theme of social and political agency. I have examined practice-based projects at London Metropolitan University, Massey University, and the University of Wollongong.

My most recent book, The Theatricalists: Making Politics Appear (Northwestern University Press 2024), challenges the view that theatricality is a distraction from “real” politics, as when cynical political gestures are derided as “pure theater” or “only theater.” But I argue that the artists and theater companies discussed in this book, including Back to Back Theatre, Tim Crouch, Rabih Mroué, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and Christoph Schlingensief represent a “theatricalist turn” that explores and tests the conditions of the theater itself. Across diverse contexts of political engagement, ranging from disability rights to representations of violence, these theatrical conditions are interconnected with political struggles, such as those over who is seen and heard, how labor is valued, and what counts as “political” in the first place. In a so-called post-political era, The Theatricalists argues that an examination of theater’s internal politics can expand our understanding of the theatricality of politics more broadly.

Outside of my academic work, I have also presented solo and collaborative creative work as part of MONA FOMA in Tasmania, Arts House in Melbourne, Performance Arcade in Wellington, and Performance Studies International Performing Climates in Melbourne; and previously in the UK at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Nottdance, The Place, Chisenhale Dance Space, Chelsea Theatre, and Camden People’s Theatre, amongst others.