I am researcher of modern and contemporary visual and performing arts, specialising in avant-garde practices. I gained my PhD in History of Art from the University of Glasgow in 2021. I joined the University as a lecturer in 2022 where I have taught across a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the School of Culture and Creative Arts. I lead workshops on Dadaist performance strategies and contribute to the practice of Dada theatre to promote the ongoing relevance of avant-garde approaches to 21st century experience. Additionally, I have managed European Union funded projects and worked with several European and international organisations to promote education for disadvantaged and socially excluded communities.

Over time my interests in avant-garde culture have moved from historical studies of the European avant-garde (Dada and Surrealism) and single-author studies (co-founder of Dada, Tristan Tzara) to investigating the application of avant-garde praxis to contemporary social, cultural, and political issues, with a focus on global art. As an advocate for interdisciplinary research and practice, I am interested in exploring the arts at the intersection of other disciplines including language and cultural studies, and quantum mechanics.

My current scholarship discusses the theatre and performance practice of the European avant-garde with a focus on Dada and Surrealism. My monograph, First Adventure to Final Flight: The Theatre of Tristan Tzara (Peter Lang’s Art and Thought Series) is the first scholarly volume devoted to the complete theatrical works of Tristan Tzara.

My upcoming publication (for Oceanic Avant-Gardes, Eds. Andrew McNamara and Ann Stephen, De Gruyter) investigates the relationship between the European avant-garde and the arts of Australia. It looks at instances of appropriation in early 20^th century European avant-garde activities and those of contemporary First Nations Australian artists and activists. This research shows how avant-garde praxis is being innovated as a mechanism for care and how anger is being articulated positively in response to social and political discourses.

Between February and May 2023, with partners from the universities of Glasgow, Bucharest, Athens, and Aix-Marseille, I contributed to an Erasmus+ mobilities project, Care, Agency, Repair, Engagement (CARE), that shared research into (post)modernist cultural responses to social justice and ecological challenges. For CARE, I delivered workshops on avant-garde strategies applied to global concerns – inequality, social exclusion, and the climate emergency – that explored anger as a response that reinforces self-worth by showing that something we care about is worth getting angry about.

With Stephen Forcer, I am currently co-editing a special issue of Dada/Surrealism. 'Approximate Humanism' (no.25) brings together scholarship on avant-garde artists’ and writers’ contributions to cultural life. It features new work on Black Dada – a current intervention in the creative industries by trans-Atlantic avant-gardes. For this volume, I am preparing the first English language translation of Tristan Tzara’s The Flight (1946), a dramatic poem analogising the humanitarian crisis of WWII. This largely unknown text is here designated as an important work of social and political history. 

List by: Type | Date

• 2021: Erasmus+, Project Funding. €248,960.00 to support project number 2020-1-UK01-KA226-VET-094440: An innovative approach to reduce the Digital divide in Vocational Education and training (ADVANCE). In collaboration with SWAPWest
• 2019: Association for Art History, Research Grant. £1,000 to support the ‘Attention! Paris Dada’ symposium, October 2021. In collaboration with Kathryn Brown, University of Loughborough
• 2019: Society for French Studies, Conference Grant and Workshop Awards Scheme. £1,000 to support the ‘Attention! Paris Dada’ symposium, October 2021. In collaboration with Kathryn Brown, University of Loughborough
• 2019: Collaborations and Cultural Activities Committee, College of Arts, University of Glasgow. £511 to support the ‘Attention! Paris Dada’ symposium, October 2021
• 2019: Research Training Support Grant, University of Glasgow. £487 to present at the Association for Art History Annual International Conference, Brighton. 4 – 6 April 2019
• 2017: Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities. £850 to develop and deliver ‘Tristan Tzara and Dada Performance Practice’ workshops delivered at the University of Glasgow, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and the Tron Theatre, Glasgow

I welcome applications for projects related to my areas of research. See Research Interests and Publications for further details.

I have previously supervised topics ranging from arts intervention in government systems (including Adoption and Looked-After-Children services) to arts funding, and activism and the arts around the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter resurgence of 2020.

Recent PhD students include:

Lapid Mashall, Kfir
Introducing “Judicial Theatre” as the Performance of Theatrical Mock Trials

I teach across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate taught courses including:

• Object Biographies
• The Global Avant-Garde
• Methodologies of Art History
• Portfolio
• Art History: Expanding the Canon
• Impressionism: Innovation and Invention

Past courses include:

•    Performance Theory Analysis
•    Setting the Scene
•    Avant-Garde Action and the Aesthetics of Nonsense

Selected Conference Papers

• 2024: ‘Conflict and Migration in Tristan Tzara’s The Flight,’ Avant-Garde and War,
• 2023: ‘Approximate Humanism in Tristan Tzara’s The Flight,’ Glasgow Theatre Seminars. University of Glasgow. March 2023.
• 2022: ‘An innovative approach to reduce the digital divide in education and training,’ Lifelong Learning for Inclusion and Sustainability Conference, University of Glasgow. June 2022.
• 2021: ‘Performing the impossible in the theatre of Tristan Tzara,’ Attention! Paris Dada, University of Loughborough. October 2021.
• 2021: ‘Duchamp’s Quantum Door,’ Rethinking the Histories and Legacies of New York Dada, University of Loughborough. October 2021.
• 2019: ‘The Body between Text and Performance in the Theatre of Tristan Tzara,’ Association for Art History Annual International Conference, Brighton. April 2019.
• 2018: ‘Theatrical Surrealisms: Tristan Tzara and Paris Dada performance,’ Realisms of the Avant-Garde, European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies’ 6th International Conference, Münster. September 2018.
• 2017: ‘Paris Dada: Negligence and the Trial of Maurice Barrès,’ Negligence/Neglection, University of Glasgow College of Arts Multidisciplinary Series, Glasgow. April 2017.
• 2016: ‘Tristan Tzara and the Manifestations of Paris Dada’ Dada 1916-2016: A Century of Revolt, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. November 2016.