Professor Mick Wallis
Chair in Performance and Culture

Research Interests

My early research career (from 1990) focused on sexuality, theatre pedagogy, and non-canonical performances of the twentieth century. The last now forms one element in a range of projects concerned with cultural histories of performance. A second focus is applied performance theory – recently, through Emergent Objects, in relation to design. 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 and Emergent Objects.

Recent 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 2007-March 2008
Emergent Objects 2 conducted a praxis-based dialogue between the disciplines of performance and design to explore and articulate the emergent nature of the interface between technologies and human agents. What are the desirable relationships between users and designed artefacts, systems or environments; and what does that imply about the development of new design thinking and practices? Cross-sector and interdisciplinary, Emergent Objects 2 involved artists, designers, choreographers, performance academics, computer scientists and roboticists from the academy and the commercial sphere. Emergent Objects 2 figured as part of the opening session, ‘The very big picture’, at dux07 (Designing for User Experience) in Chicago, November 2007. The conference 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.

Inter-war village drama survey
(Principal Investigator)
AHRB Research Grants Scheme (July 2004-June 2008)
The principal aim of this project was to conduct a survey of English sources relating to village drama in the 'long' interwar period, 1880-1945, centring on 1919-39. The broad objective was to deepen and extend what had been 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 monograph, Drama in the Villages. Dr Philip Kiszely joined the project as Research Fellow in December 2005.

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Research Group

Cultural Industries and Performance Contexts

Research Groups

PERFORMANCE OF DISABILITY HISTORIES: REMEMBRANCE AND TRANSMISSION (September 2008 – August 2009). Invited specialist. Led by Dr Sonali Shah, this Beyond Text Workshop Programme explored methodologies and ethics of articulating the findings of ‘Time of Our Lives’, Shah’s social scientific research on the early life course of three generations of disabled people, born in the 1940s, 1960s and 1980s. My contribution included the seminar papers ‘Performance studies perspectives’ (April 2009) and ‘Disability, performance and identity’ (joint dissemination event, December 2009).

LANDSCAPE AND ENVIRONMENT OF INTER-WAR ENGLAND - AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH (2007-8). Invited member. The Network, led by Prof. Alun Howkins, University of Sussex, was part of the AHRC Landscape and Environment Programme. My contribution included the seminar paper, 'F.G. Thomas on the Changing Village' at Seminar 1, 'Imagining the Village', University of Sussex, 14 September 2007

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 RESEARCH GROUP (IRHRG)
Co-founded November 2000. This highly interdisciplinary Group – including for instance agricultural economic historians, museologists, cultural and social historians and cultural geographers - mounts regular conferences and seminars.

Practice-led 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)
Performed with the family-based Movements in Mayhem, In the 21st century was designed gently to queer the residual heroics of some contemporary performance.

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Current Teaching

I lead ‘Cultures of Performance’ (School Common module, UG Level 1); and contribute to ‘Performance Contexts’ (in MA programme ‘Performance, Culture and Context’).

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Current role

PVAC Faculty Teaching Development Team member

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Supervised MA and PhD students

I currently co-supervise 4 PhD students in underground club performance; performance and dark play; food and performance; and performance and social housing. Two are practice-based. I welcome approaches in these and similar as well as my own research areas. My supervisee Patrick Duggan gained his PhD on ‘Trauma-Tragedy’ in 2010; we are co-editing Performance Research 16 (1), ‘On trauma’ for publication Spring 2011.

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Publications

Mick Wallis and Simon Shepherd (2002): Studying Plays extended 2e (Arnold); 3e in press for 2010.

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Presentations

Conferences

‘Emergent Objects: Performance, design and world-making’, Performing Publics, Performance Studies international #16, Toronto, 9-12 June 2010
‘Performing the WI: Theatre and performance in the Women’s Institutes in interwar England’, Women’s Life and Leisure in the Twentieth Century, Women’s History Network Midland’s Region Conference, 21 November 2009
‘Fields of practice: landscapes of interwar English Village Theatre’, Living Landscapes, AHRC Landscape and Environment Conference 2, Aberystwyth, 18-21 June 2009
‘Embodied conversations: performance and the design of a robotic dancing partner’, undisciplined! Design Research Society Conference, Sheffield, 16-19 July 2008- with Joslin McKinney (50%)
‘SpiderCrab and the Emergent Object: Designing for the Twenty-first Century’, dux07 (Designing for User Experience), 5-7 November Chicago 2007 -with Alice Bayliss, Joslin McKinney and Sita Popat (25%)
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’ and Final Plenary panel, PARIP International Conference 2005, University of Leeds, 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

Conference Contributions
‘Performance as paradigm for learning and teaching’
Active Learners – Inspiring Teaching, University of Leeds 2nd Learning and Teaching Conference, 17 December 2004

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.

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External Activity / Professional Links

Board of Directors, Performance Studies international
Editorial Board, Performance Research

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Awards

LEARNING AND TEACHING

Awards
National Teaching Fellowship (July 2001)


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