Professor Vida Midgelow

Biography

Vida L Midgelow, joined UAL as Dean of Doctoral School & Professor in Dance and Choreographic Practices in 2023. Prior to this role she lead the PgR provision across Middlesex University and its partners. Professor Midgelow is a distinguished leader in doctoral education in the arts and is principal researcher of Artistic Doctorates in Europe, www.artisticdoctorates.com (Erasmus+ funded). She has been invited to give talks and consult widely in the field of doctoral education and has published guidance for the doctoral sector including the co-authored work, Reconsidering Research and Supervision as Creative Embodied Practice (ADIE).

As an artist-scholar she works on practice-as-research, movement practices and improvisation and has published widely in these areas. Her practice includes work in somatically informed improvisation, performative lecture formats and installation/experiential performance practices/video works.

She has a particular commitment to supporting artists as researchers, creating generative creative spaces in which arts practices can be articulated in ways that remain close to the body and close to the practice. This work finds its most visible form in her co-devised Creative Articulations Process (CAP). This practice has be used widely by international practitioner-researchers and contributes to methods for practice research. This work is currently the subject of co-authored book for Routledge (forthcoming, 2024)

Selected public works include the extensive edited collection, Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance (Oxford Press), BreathBone (NottDance19 and InDialogue Festivals), Improvisation as a Paradigm for Phenomenologies (University of Illinois Press), Practice-as-Research (Bloombury) and Reworking the Ballet (Routledge) - which arose from her own PhD thesis.

Professor Midgelow also undertakes mentoring, dramaturgical, curatorial and consultancy roles for artists and organisations. These facilitative activities combine with her own research within the framework of the Choreographic Lab, of which she is co-director (with Professor Jane Bacon). The Choreographic Lab has sought to provide platforms for sharing choreographic practices and critical inquiry. Extending these interests she conceptualized and is co-editor of the hybrid peer reviewed journal, Choreographic Practices, published with Intellect (2010-2020).

In addition, she is currently co-investigator for Future Ecologies: Producing Dance Network (AHRC). This network seeks to develop a more sustainable and equitable ecosystem for the Independent and HE dance sectors. Midgelow is regular peer reviewer for several funding bodies (inc. AHRC, Leverhulme, British Academy and Austrian Science Foundation) and for publishers/journals (inc. Routledge, Palgrave, Oxford University Press, Dance Research Journal and Theatre, Dance and Performance Training). She has also served as: Chair for The Standing Conference on Dance in Higher Education, Vice-Chair for Dance4, and board member for Society of Dance History Scholars (USA), for whom she was founding editor of Conversations across the field of Dance Studies. She is also trained as a Thai Yoga Massage practitioner of the sheer pleasure of working with and supporting bodyminds.