Post-PhD Research

As I move from PhD research into the next phase of my journey, I find myself coming back to a set of interconnected curiosities: how do performance, embodied intelligence, and education speak to one another?

I drew this map this morning to capture this constellation of ideas. It feels like I am not leaving one research world behind, but widening the frame around it.

My PhD helped me think about embodiment in a strictly educational context, with a focus on research methods that are well established. Now, in this post-PhD moment, I am drawn to questions that are at once more expansive and emergent. I want to explore performance as research, and the body as a site of inquiry. I want to stay close to embodied intelligence, where learning is not only cognitive but sensory, relational, and situated in the moving body.

At the same time, I am increasingly interested in how education can move beyond classrooms, how data can be read without stripping away complexity, and how the friction between artificial and embodied intelligence might be studied critically. It gives me a great sense of reassurance that these interests do not sit apart from one another. But can come together in the spaces between dance, pedagogy, cognition, and technology. At this stage I do not have a set of clearly defined research questions, but just a sense of what direction my curiosity is taking me in!

Europe 2025

Two weeks after I defended my doctoral thesis, I left for a month-long trip across Europe. 3 weeks, 4 countries, 7 events, including talks, workshops, and a performance, and many, many conversations with international colleagues and friends. This felt like a real celebration of all the hard work that went into the PhD, because I had the opportunity to share my work, ideas, and research with diverse, interdisciplinary audiences. I also got to re-explore the connections between my artistic practice and academic research. 

The first stop was Oslo, where I was invited by RITMO, an interdisciplinary research centre. This invitation came because, serendipitously, Alexander, the director of the centre, is also interested in stillness! We had a week to exchange research approaches into stillness – both artistic and scientific. We closed the week with a site-based performance at a wonderful public library, Deichman Bjørvika. I also got to present some of my doctoral research into embodied pedagogy and mathematics teaching at their weekly seminar. I was thrilled when a cognitive neuroscientist said she finally “got” the idea of cognition being embodied thanks to my presentation!

The next stop was at Freudenthal Institute, a multidisciplinary institute for science and mathematics education at Utrecht University. Anna and I, who met last year, found a lot of common interests and decided to co-present our work to the other faculty at the Institute. Some folks resonated with our approach to embodied learning; others were very resistant to it. This was definitely an opportunity to reflect on the need to sharpen our arguments and strengthen our communication.

I also had the opportunity to share my research with a diverse group of participants at the University of Rome. Here are some reflections from the session:
”Finally, a space where mathematics is explored in an original and collective way.”
”The more central the body and embodiment become, the more classrooms will be organised in ways that allow experimentation with space, time, and self-expression through the body.”

Italy was a different vibe altogether. It was warm and slightly disorganised, reminding me of home! I got an opportunity to engage with artistic research with dancers at Sharing In Roma, and I was really grateful for how welcoming and passionate everyone was. It was thrilling to see how different strands of my research practice interweave so seamlessly.

The trip wrapped up near Frankfurt, where the final workshop meant sharing complex ideas with kids and families, not just academics! It was fun, messy, and so rewarding.

Looking back, what stands out isn’t just the work, it’s the connections, awkward moments of learning, and inspiring conversations with colleagues and friends across cities.

Teaching 8th grade math using the body

About 15 years ago when I lived in London, I had the opportunity to experiment with teaching curriculum subjects like mathematics and biology and English through dance and creative movement. Even at the time this way of integrating movement with curricular subjects as a pedagogical method was new and exciting. I would work alongside the subject teacher, say a biology teacher, and together we would design the lesson plans such that students learned biology topics through working creatively and expressively with the body. There were many debates at that time regarding the intrinsic value of dance, which would be the value of dance as an art form, and the instrumental value of dance, which would be using dance to teach something else.

Over the years I have thought a lot about this debate between the intrinsic value and the instrumental value of the arts in the context of education. And I have come to the understanding that this is a binary that does not serve us well. Through movement we learn about many things. We learn how to move, we learn what it means to move. But we also learn what it means to work collaboratively, to creatively iterate an idea, to communicate. So my question then became why can't we on other things as well? Such as how numbers related to each other, or how to manipulate quadrilaterals to form other shapes. The instrumental argument is that movement is being used to teach mathematics. But what if, because we use movement, we understand or relate to mathematics differently? Can the inclusion of embodied pedagogy in math teaching actually change the way we relate to math and the way we understand math itself?

This last week feels like culmination of sorts for all these questions and curiosities around how embodied pedagogy impacts the teaching of what we call curricular subjects. This is because as part of my PhD research I have had the opportunity to design a module to teach standard 8 mathematics using embodied pedagogy. I had the opportunity to trial this module with a group of very engaged and curious 8th graders. It was very exciting to be able to finally systematically and rigorously study something that I have been working with for these past 15 years.

I am very much looking forward to the next steps of analysing the data and writing up the findings of this first phase of the research.

Hegemony of Narrative Ontology - reserach insights from Open Invitation

Open Invitation_Field Research

A post by Abhinav, who came along on a field trip to record sounds of the rocks!

Artists Locked In: Note to Self

This is something I wrote on the request of Aastha Gandhi, for Studio 155 Artist Collaborative, in Delhi.

Note to Self.

What (the f***)?

We have discussed ad-nauseam the positives and the negatives of this pandemic, the social distancing and the isolation. An international tour is cancelled (boo!), a webinar with folks from remote parts of the world is attended (yay!). We all take a moment to acknowledge the hectic pace of our lives and appreciate this enforced break. We dutifully do some inner work, some journaling, and make some meaningful comments on the nature of our life, or if we are feeling slightly more generous, on life in general.

Then what?

We try to reinvent ourselves for the current times, make our work relevant, explore the digital space. Do the dishes. Go for a walk, try to stay away from social media (because it’s toxic, duh!) but can’t. Post. Check. Wash a few more dishes. Check again. Am I still relevant? Is the world still interested in me?

So what?

We realise we are stuck. Stuck in this weird time-space. In limbo. Unable to do the things we used to do. The things we love. The things we were good at and known for.

Now what?

Now I have to say something meaningful, cool yet off hand. Something so simple it was obvious all along, and yet changes lives profoundly, because I’m an artist who continues to be relevant in the pandemic after all.

Here it is – I try not to disappoint!

Is art really relevant? Are we as artists relevant? Do we have to take on this burden of making a difference? What if we give ourselves a break? A real break. And stop trying to prove that we matter. And instead we wait. Without knowing what we wait for. When it will appear. What it will feel like. But wait anyway, until we are sure. Sure in our bones, in our blood, that it is time, and we are ready, to act again.