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Copyright

Konstantina Georgelou

Published On

2025-10-24

Page Range

pp. 337–358

Language

  • English

Print Length

22 pages

16. Practice-led Research

Transversal Ways of Sensing/Knowing

Chapter of: Performance Research Methods: Interdisciplinary Methods for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies(pp. 337–358)
What are possible research methods in performance that move transversally between the classroom, the studio, and public space? This chapter discusses practice-led research, focusing on transversal ways of knowing and sensing that swerve through artistic, social, and theoretical spaces. Doing research by means of affective, embodied, and politicised methods is approached in this chapter through the conceptual frameworks of ‘fugitive knowledge’ (Moten and Harney; Akomolafe), ‘practice-as-research’ (Melrose; Nelson), ‘performative research’ (Haseman), ‘attending laterally’ (Georgelou and Protopapa), and ‘decolonial pedagogy’ (Vázquez). To illustrate this method, the chapter first discusses Dramaturgy at Work, a three-year collaborative research project on dramaturgy, which is then followed by a shorter reflection on an interdisciplinary bachelor course on Engaged Citizenship designed and developed with colleagues. Both examples emphasise the entwined interpersonal, politicised, and artistic methods practiced and transmitted in practice-led research. These methods can lead to interventionist and affective ways of doing research, the chapter argues, fostering social imagination and embedded action in performance and beyond.

Contributors

Konstantina Georgelou

(author)
Assistant Professor at Utrecht University
Assistant Professor at Amsterdam University of the Arts
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9502-9428

Konstantina Georgelou is a performing arts theorist, dramaturg and researcher. Her field of research is on the practice and theory of dramaturgical activity, especially regarded from a political perspective, which is part of her ongoing inquiry on embodied practices of resistance and forms of dis/order as these are thought and expressed within dance and performance. She studies artistic, discursive and activist practices and researches in-practice collective modes of production in theory and in the arts. Her publications have appeared in several journals and books, such as with TDR, Performance Research Journal, Performance Paradigm, Maska, Routledge, Palgrave MacMillan; she co-authored The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017) and co-edited the issue ‘On Names’ (Performance Research Journal, 2017). She has worked together with several artists including Zhana Ivanova, Chara Kotsali, Genevieve Murphy, Billy Mullaney, Danae Theodoridou, Janez Janša and Efrosini Protopapa. She is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University and at Amsterdam University for the Arts.