Josephine joined the academic team at Brunel in September 2007. Prior to this she taught at St. Mary’s College, Twickenham where she was responsible for setting up and leading the Physical Theatre Programme, the first undergraduate degree of its kind in the South East of England. With a first class BA Hons in Drama and English, a PGCE in English and Drama and a PhD in Contemporary Performance Practice, Josephine is committed to the creative exchange that occurs within her undergraduate and post-graduate teaching and her research.
Josephine’s key area of research is concerned with (syn)aesthetics and involves an ongoing enquiry into ‘the visceral’ in performance in both practice and audience experience. She has recently published (Syn)aesthetics – Redefining Visceral Performance with Palgrave Macmillan (2009). This contains original interviews with cutting-edge practitioners including Punchdrunk, Akram Khan, Naomi Wallace, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Graeae, Curious and Shunt. Other published writings on her subject include ‘Space & the Senses; the (syn)aesthetics of Punchdrunk’s site-sympathetic work’ in Body, Space & Technology (Vol. 07/01) and 'To Deliver Us from (Syn)aesthetics' an interactive document in Flesh & Text, a CD ROM marking 12 years of Bodies in Flight (2001). Josephine co-edited Performance and Technology: Practices of Virtual Embodiment and Interactivity (2006) with Susan Broadhurst. and is working with Sue on a new edited collection entitled, Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st Century Performance (forthcoming, 2009). Future publications will involve collaborations with a wide range of practitioners including Naomi Wallace.
As a practitioner Josephine has a broad range of experience, which includes exploring her research interests as writer and director on a variety of student-centred performance projects. Past and present collaborations experiment with the fusion of embodied practice and the written text within playful performance encounters. Currently she is in the initial stages of a collaborative site-specific project with the live artist and designer Cherry Truluck. Via a play with(in) and between ‘real’ and virtual space, dance and written text this project will examine the process of healing on an immediately human level regarding the body, mind and relationships and connecting this with an exploration of healing in a wider ecological context.
Josephine organised the ‘Sensual Technologies’, symposium working alongside Stelarc, Susan Broadhurst and Johannes Birringer. This one-day conference formed part of the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ 2008 programme of practice and debate and explored alternate and aesthetic uses of technology that extend artistic practice beyond the expected, into unusual and heightened experience. She has been a member of the planning committee for the Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts (DRHA) Conference since 2008.
Josephine is a Member of the Trustees for Punchdrunk’s Executive Board. She has been the Sub-Editor of Body, Space & Technology since its inception in July 2001 and is a member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media.
Brunel's School of Arts on-line Journal: Body, Space & Technology
/bst/bst/
International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, Intellect Press
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/Josephineurnals.php?issn=14794713
Punchdrunk Theatricals
http://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/
Flesh & Text an interactive document by Bodies In Flight
http://www.bodiesinflight.co.uk/index.php?page_id=32
