Professor Mick Wallis
Phone Number: 0113 343 8723
Email: pcumw@leeds.ac.uk
Roles
Professor of Performance and Culture
University of Leeds leader for UoA65 in RAE2008
Graduate Board
Member of Senate
RESEARCH
Research Interests
My early research career (from 1990) had its principal foci in theatre pedagogy, sexuality and non-canonical performances of the twentieth century. The latter now forms one element in a range of projects I gather under the rubric of cultural histories of performance. I emphatically include the present within this frame; and it includes both practice-based and paper-based productions.
A second focus of my research is performance theory. A third – winding in pedagogic and public-sector research - concerns participatory arts experience for people with severe access needs, and is conducted under the aegis of the Arts Work With People Project (AWP), founded from my National Teaching Fellowship (2001).
Much of my work is interdisciplinary, especially in the cultural histories of performance, the Performance Robotics Research Group and Emergent Objects.
Funded Research Projects
Emergent Objects 2: designing the technological interface through performance
(Principal Investigator)
EPSRC/AHRC Designing for the Twenty-first Century initiative, £301k, January-December 2007
Emergent Objects 2 draws on performance knowledge to explore and articulate the emergent nature of the interface between technological object and human that is fundamental to the development of new design thinking and practices. The project uses performance perspectives to investigate the modelling of a role for design in a technological society and asks questions about the desirable relationships between users and designed artefacts, systems or environments. Emergent Objects is a portfolio project which adopts an interdisciplinary standpoint to promote new ways of thinking about design and designing from a performance perspective. Cross-sector and interdisciplinary, it involves artists, designers, choreographers, performance academics, computer specialists and roboticists from the academy and the professional sphere. Emergent Objects 2 figured as part of the opening session, ‘The very big picture’, at dux07 in Chicago, November 2007. This biennial conference on designing for user experience attracted 700 delegates, mostly professional designers.
Emergent Objects 2 follows on the Emergent Objects 1 Research Cluster (PI Dr Calvin Taylor), funded at £50k for January-December 2005 under the same initiative. This twelve-month project investigated the relationships between discourses and practices in design and performance. The aim was to provide the protocols and framework for further funded research dedicated to the theorisation and development of design processes.
(Principal Investigator)
AHRB Research Grants Scheme (July 2004- June 2008)
The principal aim of this project, due for completion in June 2008, is to conduct a survey of English sources relating to village drama in the 'long' interwar period, 1880-1945, centering on 1919-39. The broad objective is to deepen and extend what are presently only superficial understandings and partial knowledge of the institutions, practices and discourses bearing on village drama, and to develop some key practitioner biographies. The research will inform a planned book with Caitlin Adams, Drama in the Villages. Dr Philip Kiszely joined the project as Research Fellow in December 2005.
Recent Publications include
- Mick Wallis, Sita Popat, Alice Bayliss, Joslin McKinney, John Bryden, David Hogg, Matthew Godden, Rich Walker (2007/8): ‘SpiderCrab and the Emergent Object: Designing for the Twenty-first Century’ dux07 Proceedings (in press)
- Alice Bayliss, Joslin McKinney, Sita Popat and Mick Wallis (2007): ‘Emergent Objects: Designing through performance’, International Journal of Performing Arts and Digital Media (in press)
- Mick Wallis (2006): ‘Ramblers associations’ in A Performance Cosmology ed. Richard Gough, Judy Christie and Daniel Watt (Routledge for Centre for Performance Research)
- Mick Wallis (2006): ‘Drama in the villages: three pioneers’ in The English Countryside 1918-39: Regeneration or Decline? ed. Paul Brassley, Jeremy Burchardt and Lynne Thompson (Boydell and Brewer)
- Mick Wallis (2005): ‘Thinking through techne’, Performance Research 10:4. Headnote essay to ‘On techne: performance and the human-crafted environment’ ed Richard Gough and Mick Wallis
- Mick Wallis (2005): ‘Translating phenomena: Sarah Siddons, Hannah Cowley and the Neoclassical stage’ Performance Research 10(1) (April): 68-80
- Isabel Jones and Mick Wallis (2005): Securing Informed Choice and Adequate Evaluation Strategies for People with Learning Disabilities Accessing the Arts in the East Midlands (for Arts Council East Midlands)
- Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis (2004): Drama /Theatre / Performance (Routledge New Critical Idiom).
- Mick Wallis (2004): ‘Their theatre and ours: Social commitment and aesthetic innovation’ in Baz Kershaw, ed. Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol.3: Since 1895 (Cambridge University Press), pp.167-191.
- Sita Popat, Gordon Ramsay, Melissa Trimingham and Mick Wallis (2004): 'Robotics and Performance: A Phenomenological Dialogue', in the proceedings of Pixelraiders 2 Conference, Sheffield Hallam University, UK, CD-ROM publication, ISBN: 1843870606F
- Mick Wallis and Simon Shepherd (2002): Studying Plays extended 2e (Arnold)
Research Groups
PERFORMANCE ROBOTICS RESEARCH GROUP (PRRG)
Co-founded May 2003 with Sita Popat (choreography), Melissa Trimingham (object theatre) and Gordon Ramsay (robotic drama). The aim is to investigate the phenomenology of the human/robot interface, through performance laboratory work and public performance.
INTERWAR RURAL HISTORY GROUP (IRHG)
Co-founded November 2000. This highly interdisciplinary Group – including for instance agricultural economic historians, museologists, cultural and social historians and cultural geographers - has mounted two conferences and four seminars are held annually. International conference planned for January 2007.
Practice as and Practice-Based Research
• Siddons/Cowley Project
This collaboration with voice artist and dancer Isabel Jones was conceived as a distributed performance essay, in parallel with the journal article ‘Translating phenomena’ (2005). It explored safe frames for expressivity, beginning with the record of Sarah Siddons’ stage presence and iconic status within the ‘civic humanism’ of late C18 London; extending this into explorations of Isabel Jones’s international expertise in communication work with autistic children, and thereby to the conceptualisation of the stage as an autistic apparatus.
• In the 21st century everyone will be Stelarc for 15 minutes (Rehearsal for a ceremonial event) (December 1999)
Conferences and Colloquia Organised
Mapping Performance Research #1
University of Leeds, 22 October 2005
Curated with Richard Gough for PRL+CPR
PARIP International Conference 2005
University of Leeds, Bretton Hall Campus, 29 June -3 July 2005
Co-curated with colleagues at Bristol and PCI.
Performance, Display and the Negotiation of Power in Public Space
University of Leeds Bretton Hall Campus, 29 April 2004
White Rose colloquium, with Máire Cross (University of Sheffield) and Andrew Prescott (University of Sheffield),
Conference Contributions
Keynote: ‘Framing Practice as Research in Performance’
African Performance Practice + Research In Action
University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, 22-25 September 2006
‘Performance Robotics Research Group’
PARIP International Conference 2005
University of Leeds, Bretton Hall Campus, 29 June -3 July 2005
‘Performance profit’
Panel convenor and own paper
‘Profiting from performance’
Towards Tomorrow? Centre for Performance Research, University of Wales at Aberystwyth, 6-10 April 2005
‘Negotiating disciplines: contribution to a dialogue’
Perform: State: Interrogate, Performance Studies International (PSi) #10, Singapore, 15 18 June 2004
‘Patterns of coincidence, recovery and loss, 1914-39’
Performance, Display and the Negotiation of Power in Public Space, White Rose colloquium, University of Leeds, Bretton Hall Campus, 29 April 2004
‘Rehearsing rural community’, Constructing Communities: Place and People in the Countryside 1918-39, Interwar Rural History Group Second Conference, Gregynog, University of Wales, 12-22 April 2004
External appointments
Editorial Board, Performance Research
Board Member, Salamanda Tandem, Nottingham
LEARNING AND TEACHING
Awards
National Teaching Fellowship (July 2001)
I co-founded the Arts Work With People Project (AWP) with this £50k award.
Conference Contributions
‘Performance as paradigm for learning and teaching’
Active Learners – Inspiring Teaching, University of Leeds 2nd Learning and Teaching Conference, 17 December 2004
Current Teaching
I lead:
Cultures of Performance - School Common module, UG Level 1
Conceptual Frameworks – MA Performance Studies
Faculty role
PVAC Faculty Teaching Development Team member
POSTGRADUATE SUPERVISION
I currently co-supervise 5 PhD students in scenographic exchange; club performance; performance and dark play; food and performance; and theatre and trauma. Four are practice-based. I welcome approaches in these and similar as well as my own research areas.