Skip to Content
Skip to main content
What do you want to do?
Foundation Undergraduate Postgraduate International
}
Find your course
}
Campus life Study support Student Services Professional Development Centre
}
Research Research degrees
}
Global Engagement
}
Business services
}
News and Events
Brunel Alumni Giving back to Brunel Contact us
}
About Colleges
}
e

Professor Susan Broadhurst
Honorary Professor

Research area(s)

  • Performance theory, critical and literary theory, continental philosophy.
  • Interrogation of technologies and the notion of the embodied performer.
  • Neuroaesthetics and the aesthetic potential of digitized technology for performance (e.g. artificial intelligence, motion capture, 3D modelling and animation, and biotechnology).

Research Interests

My personal research development entails an interrogation of technologies and the notion of the embodied performer, expressed in my publications, performance practice and interdisciplinary collaborations.

Research Activities

My first book, Liminal Acts: A Critical Overview of Contemporary Performance and Theory (Continuum, 1999) explored and analysed certain experimental performances which prioritised the body and technology. My second, a monograph on performance and technology entitled Digital Practices: Aesthetic and Neuroesthetic Approaches to Performance and Technology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007/2011), offered a description of a range of art practices that involve interaction with new technologies. I am  co-editor with Josephine Machon of Performance and Technology: Practices of Technological Embodiment and Interactivity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006/2011), Sensualities/Textualities and Technologies: Writings of the Body in 21st Century Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006/2011) and Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of Empowerment, Embodiment and Technicity (Palgrave Macmillan 2012), which investigates the implications of technology on identity in embodied performance. I am also the co-editor with Sara Price of Digital Bodies: Creativity and Technology in the Arts and Humanities (Palgrave Macmillan: September 2017) Hardback ISBN 978-1-349-95240-3, which explores creativity, embodiment and technology.

I was invited to be Editor for Palgrave’s Series ‘Studies in Performance and Technology’ in 2010 and as such have commissioned various works. I have several other publications in this area and have been co-editor of the EBSCO indexed Body, Space & Technology (ISSN 1470-9120) since 2001, a performing and visual arts on-line journal, which establishes links between academics and practitioners both nationally and internationally (http://www.bstjournal.com). The journal has recently joined the Open Library of the Humanities (OLH) Platform based at Birkbeck, University of London.

Regarding practice-led research I organised ‘Intelligence, Interaction, Reaction and Performance’, a series of performances and installations that analyse and explore the interface between physicality, digital interactivity, AI technology and biotechnology in contemporary art and performance art.

 

Research links

Similar research interests