About the Executive Committee

The Society for Dance Research Executive Committee is made up of internationally-recognised dance scholars and professionals interested in advancing the study and appreciation of all forms of dance.

Society for Dance Research is managed by an elected executive committee that includes honorary officers and an elected chair. It is responsible for the running of the Society and for delegating members to oversee the publications, events and working parties.

Kathryn Stamp, Chair

Kathryn Stamp (PGCE/MA/PhD) is a dance researcher and educator, currently working as Assistant Professor at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE). Her research interests span inclusive dance, representation in dance and trans/interdisciplinary research. In 2020 Kathryn completed her AHRC-funded PhD at C-DaRE, which focused on public interventions that sought to explore and challenge perceptions of disabled people who dance, in collaboration with People Dancing. Kathryn is Editorial Manager for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, an Ambassador for AWA DANCE charity, and Advisory Board member for We Are Epic. 

Lise Uytterhoeven, Co-opted

Dr Lise Uytterhoeven is Director of Dance Studies at The Place, London Contemporary Dance School. She holds a BA Dance Education from CODARTS (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) and an MA (Distinction) Dance Studies and PhD from University of Surrey, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her monograph Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: Dramaturgy and Engaged Spectatorship is published by Palgrave Macmillan in the New World Choreographies series. She has published in Contemporary Theatre ReviewResearch in Dance EducationThe Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies (ed. Sherril Dodds), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet (ed. Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel & Jill Nunes Jensen) and The Ethics of Art (ed. Guy Cools & Pascal Gielen). She co-authored the study guide What Moves You? Shaping your dissertation in dance (2017) is published by Routledge. Lise is the Chair of the Society for Dance Research and a member of the Associate Board of Dance Research.


Charlotte Waelde, Deputy Chair
Charlotte Waelde is Professor of Intellectual Property law working at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University.  She has long worked with the creative industries while her focus on dance started nearly a decade ago, when she had an AHRC funded project with Professor Sarah Whatley to research disability, dance and law.  Following on her work on a number of other European funded projects which included a focus on dance, she moved from Exeter Law School to work full time at the Centre for Dance Research in 2016.  This move underpinned her commitment both to dance and to interdisciplinary research.  Charlotte is involved in a number of roles with a range of organisations within the creative and cultural sector.  She is currently a trustee of Candoco Dance Company.

Bethany Whiteside, Interim Membership Secretary

Dr Bethany Whiteside, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is Research Lecturer and Doctoral Degrees Coordinator at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Her research focuses on the cultural and social analysis of participatory dance, often through ethnographic means, with a particular focus on the ballet, Highland, and Irish dancing genres. In addition to working closely with the doctoral cohort, Bethany also teaches critical and contextual studies on the BA Modern Ballet programme.

Jane Carr

Dr Jane Carr worked as a ballet dancer before studying dance in higher education. She was later a founding member of quiet, an artists’ group that collaborated on multidisciplinary performance works during the 1990’s.Currently Head of School of Media and Performance at the University of Bedfordshire, Jane has taught in a range of higher Education contexts including at Trinity Laban.  She also worked for many years at Morley College in Southeast London to develop opportunities for adults and young people to participate in dance. She received a BA and MA in Dance Studies from Laban and a PhD from Roehampton University in 2008. Dr Carr continues to develop upon her doctoral research into embodiment in the context of a wide range of dance practices leading to publications on Uk Jazz dancing, Improvisaton and Choregraphy.  She is   Co- Investigator on the AHRC funded project ‘Dominica as a Centre of Excellence for the Preservation & Celebration of the Creole Culture through Language, the Arts and its indigenous Kalinagos’

Alexandra Kolb

Alexandra Kolb is Professor of Dance at Roehampton University, London. She has published many academic articles and two books: Performing Femininity: Dance and Literature in German Modernism and the anthology Dance and Politics. She is a recipient of the Marlis Thiersch Prize, the Gertrude Lippincott Award, a Harry Ransom Fellowship, and a Visiting Professorship at Grenoble University. She is finalizing a co-edited book titled Post-Utopia and Europe in the Performing Arts (forthcoming 2021) and writing a monograph on Dancing the Everyday: Choreographies of the Ordinary and their Corporeal Politics.

Lee DavallSecretary

Lee Davall is the Interim Head of Learning and Teaching and Master of Arts Education (Dance Teaching) Programme Manager in the Faculty of Education at Royal Academy of Dance. Lee’s research interests include teaching, learning and management in compulsory sectors of education. Lee is particularly interested in cooperative learning and the use of assessment, predominantly peer assessment in raising achievement. Lee is also interested in the training and development of Gifted and Talented students with high achieving Performing Arts specialist contexts. Lee has extensive experience of delivering the Secondary dance curriculum and quality assurance of assessment. Lee has held a number of leadership positions that have required strategic planning, implementation and management. In addition to this, Lee has taught in the private dance sector a range of dance styles for graded exams and competition dances. Previously, Lee worked as Director of Dance for a selective Performing Arts Academy for students aged 14-19 years, with an aptitude for Dance.

Dr Sandie Bourne

Dr Sandie Bourne is a consultant for black dancers in British Ballet. Her Black British Ballet project aims to produce a suite of resources to document the history and experiences of Black dancers and choreographers in British ballet in the last century. Sandie studied performing arts at London Studio Centre. She has a BA in Performing Arts, major in Dance from Middlesex University, a MA in Dance Studies from the University of Surrey and a PhD Dance Studies, University of Roehampton (2017). Her research title was Black British Ballet: Race, Representation and Aesthetics. Published chapters include: Tracing the Evolution of Black Representation in Ballet and the Impact on Black British Dancers Today in (Akinleye 2018), Looking Through the Keyhole in (Brookes 2018), a Book Review on Halifu Osumare, ‘Dancing in Blackness, A Memoir’ in Dance Research, Vol 37.1 (2019), Portrayals of Black people in Western narrative ballets in (Akinleye 2021). She was guest lecture at the University of Roehampton, University of Malta, Middlesex University, English National Ballet School, Canterbury Christ Church University and Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.

Beth Burrage, Treasurer

Beth Burrage is the Quality and Compliance Manager at London Contemporary Dance School, The Place. Beth has over eight years of experience as an administration, with strong organisational and communication skills and particular experience in policy writing, ensuring compliance with regulation, committee meeting secretary and budget holding skills. Beth has a keen interest in dance and education and following graduating with a BA (Hons) in Dance Performance from Middlesex University, she joined Springs Dance Company as an apprentice dancer performing and teaching workshops in a range of community settings across the UK and New Zealand. She was also Projects Assistant for One Youth Dance for four years, helping to organise various shows and events. Beth has worked at The Place since 2015. During her time at The Place she has worked for the Centre for Advanced Training (CAT) programme, collaborated on events with the Royal Academy of Dance and ISTD, and also gained extensive higher education administration experience in various roles within London Contemporary Dance School’s administration team.

Sinibaldo De Rosa- Event Secretary

Sinibaldo De Rosa (PhD) is an independent researcher and free-lance artist exploring movement, dance and ritual for people at the margins across multiple performance practices and ethnographic contexts. 
In 2022, he earned an Advanced Diploma in Movement Notation (Laban) from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et Danse de Paris (CNSMDP) after reconstructing extracts of Donald McKayle’s Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulders (1959) and completing the project ‘Staging Kurdish Alevi Rituals: 4Kapı 40Makam’ also thanks to the support of an Ivor Guest Research Grant and a Study Grant from the British Institute in Ankara. Sponsored by the AHRC-SWW DTP and by a Max Weber Stiftung Research Grant at the Orient Institute-Istanbul, his PhD thesis (Drama, University of Exeter and Music, Cardiff University, 2020) is titled Movement in Contemporary Staged Adaptations of the Alevi Semahs (1982-2018). In the past, he also earned a Research Master’s in Area Studies (Turkish) at Universiteit Leiden, a BA in Cultural Anthropology at Alma Mater – Università degli Studi di Bologna and two Erasmus scholarships to study at the Middle East Technical University and Marmara University. He served the Society for Dance Research as a member of the Executive Committee since 2020 and as Events Secretary since 2021, contributing to the organisation of a Choreographic Talk on WNO’s Carmen in 2020, the Inclusion and Intersectionality Symposium in 2021 and a Choreographic Forum on Ailey (The Film) in 2022. 

Based in Bristol, he is an Associate Lecturer in Dance and Theatre at Roehampton University, Bird College and Rose Bruford College, as well as a member of the artist-led collective Interval and a Swedish massage therapist for his own company Ursa Major Movement and Massage.

Bethany Johnstone

I am a PhD research student within the department of Information Studies at University College London. My research investigates the information-seeking behaviours of dance researchers with the aim to understand how this can inform the creation, development, and implementation of new online dance archive resources of the future. Previously, I have completed both a BA and MA in dance and cultural studies from the University of Surrey and MSc information science at University College London. 

Presently, I also sit as a board member of the Association of Performing Arts Collections (APAC) as their elected student and academic representative. Within this role, I have been able to launch a series of research cafes for students to come and discuss the trial and tribulations of studying, an annual student and academic showcase for researchers to share their research with the wider APAC community and chair panel events including a joint symposium between both APAC and Society for theatre research entitled Clear sailing: navigating the archives.  In the past few years, I have also presented research at Coventry University’s C-DaRE’s Digital Echo’s symposium, University of Gothenburg’s Critical Heritage Studies: Current Discourses and Global Challenges conference and helped publish a series of digital preservation guidance for preforming arts archives sector professionals alongside APAC’s digital preservation working group. Being on the board for Society for Dance Research would help me to bridge the two research interests of performing arts collections and dance further.

Rosamaria Cisneros

Rosamaria is a dancer and choreographer, Dance Historian and Critic, Roma Scholar, Sociologist, Flamenco Historian and Peace Activist who graduated from UW-Madison and went on to complete her Master’s in Dance History and Criticism from UNM-Albuquerque (USA). Her PhD is in Sociology with a focus on Roma women, intersectionality, dialogic feminism and communicative methodologies.  At the moment she is an artist-researcher at Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research based in the UK. She is also an independent artist, dancer, curator and teacher who has organised various festivals and exhibitions. Her dance films have screened in the UK, US, Colombia, Mexico, Greece, Cyprus and Germany and her latest documentary won best documentary from the UK in 2016

Cisneros brings conceptual grounding in debates around decolonising dance, archives and practice research and through her consultancy work for the International Council on Archives, leading their ethical archives project, and chair of the Equality and Diversity Task Force for Europeana Foundation, Cisneros is well placed to discuss EDI-related tensions. She is also located in a network of practitioner and researchers working in ‘inclusive’ and ‘marginalised’ dance practices and supports services (e.g. NHS, Save the Children, EU-Commission) to explore the potential of arts and culture in their services. 

Anita Wadsworth

With an MA [Distinction] in Choreography from TrinityLaban, I create performances for a wide range of contexts, from poetry and storytelling to one-to-one interactions, with an interest in “choreographing care”.

In 2013, I co-created SLiDE Dance to create accessible dance events and performances in Croydon. I currently work as an Academic Tutor at Bird College, as Faculty for bbodance teaching qualifications and as a facilitator for dance and creative workshops for organisations and communities in London. 

I recently completed Arts Council funded research to explore methods of practice and collaboration that support neurodivergence and mental health. This work has led me to the intersection of dance and the visual arts, exploring installation work where choreography is repetitive movement, caring action, and echoes of the absent, resting or ill body. 

www.jigsawglue.com

Karen Robinson, Administrator

Karen is an experienced professional in the field of dance producing and management. Currently she is a producer and lecturer at London Studio Centre, producing IMAGES Ballet Company, INTOTO Dance Company, Jazz Co. and SEEDTIME. In addition to her work at the London Studio Centre, Karen is also a sought-after freelance producer. She has worked with numerous independent artists, providing them with valuable guidance and support in their artistic endeavors. As a coach and mentor, Karen helps artists navigate the complexities of the industry and achieve their creative goals.

Karen holds a BA(Hons) in Dance Theatre, and an MA in Dance Producing and Management. Driven by the desire to promote, enable and elevate artists to have long, sustainable and healthy careers in the arts, Karen’s extensive experience, combined with her strong educational background, allows her to bring a unique perspective to every project she undertakes whether it is producing a dance performance or mentoring creative artists.