I am Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University, where I teach digital media practice and theory classes on the BA Media Studies and BA Media and Cultural Studies programmes…

Dr. Francesca Placanica is Assistant Professor in Music in the Department of Music at Maynooth University, where she is also Director of Performance. A singer and artist-researcher with international experience in opera and music theatre, she has recently terminated a Marie Sklodowska Curie Individual Fellowship at University of Huddersfield, where she was the project-leader of the practice-based project NePraMusT (Networks of Practice in New Music Theatre). Between 2015 and 2017, she was the project-leader of the artistic research project ‘En-Gendering Monodrama: Artistic Research and Experimental Production’ completed at Maynooth University, one of the few artistic research projects awarded a two-year Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellowship.  Her monodrama original production toured Europe and Ireland between 2014-2018. In 2017 she was granted an Arts Council music commission award to have a vocal work composed for her and Irish Composer and Poet, which premiered and toured Ireland in October 2018 (in absentia). Francesca is co-editor of Cathy Berberian: Pioneer of Contemporary Vocality (Ashgate, 2014) and has worked extensively on primary sources from Cathy Berberian’s private archives while completing her Master’s thesis Cathy Berberian: Performance as Composition at Southern Methodist University (Dallas TX, 2007), and further in 2012 and 2015-16. Her articles and essays, spanning nineteenth-century Italian opera and twentieth-century vocality, have appeared in musicological, performance journals and collected essays. She is currently curating an issue on Voice and Technology for Le nuove musiche (Pisa University) and a critical biography on Cathy Berberian (Mimesis Editore, Milan) She has been invited as speaker and performer at numerous International symposia and conferences. She is the creator and organizer of the Embodied Monologues interdisciplinary research series and network. Francesca holds a PhD from the University of Southampton (2013) and has obtained relevant degrees in voice performance and musicology from Italy (Laurea cum Laude Unical 2003, Diploma in Canto Lirico Conservatorio Vibo Valentia, 2011), the UK (MMus Performance Newcastle University, 2005), and the USA (MA in Music History and Literature/Opera Performance Southern Methodist University, 2007). 

Dr. Jeneen Naji is Associate Professor of Digital Media in the Department of Media Studies in Maynooth University, Ireland where she lectures on the BA Media Studies, MA in Critical Creative Media and the BSc Multimedia,Mobile & Web Development…

Adrian Scahill is a lecturer in Irish traditional music and ethnomusicology at Maynooth University. He was subject editor for traditional music for The Encyclopaedia of Music in Ireland (2013), and is a frequent reviewer for the Journal of Music…

Antonio Cascelli is a musicologist and performer specialising in piano accompaniment. His main research interest is in the history of music theory, with particular focus on analysis, theory, metaphor and performance…

My academic qualifications from Trinity College Dublin include a PhD in Music Analysis and Performance (2003) and a first-class honours Bachelor of Arts in Music degree (1996). During my time at Trinity I was awarded the Taylor Entrance Exhibition…

Born in NYC to Irish-actor parents, Oona moved permanently to Ireland after completing her Ph.D. at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. She held post-doctoral fellowships at Queen’s University Belfast and Trinity College Dublin, and has lectured in the Department of English at Maynooth University since 2008. Oona’s academic research interests lie in Irish Studies, particularly of the late 19th and 20th centuries; in Memory and Trauma Studies; in ecocriticism; and in writings of New Zealand and Australia. She has published widely in these fields, including, among other books, Irish Pastoral, the first monograph to consider Irish literature from a post-colonial and ecocritical perspective, and the acclaimed four-volume Memory Ireland series. Oona is currently editing a monograph on postcolonial ecocriticism, Extractivist Narratives, that examines contemporary Australian novels’ representations of land development, waste, and the environment.

Oona is also a creative writer who oversees Undergraduate Creative Writing, including the new BA in Creative Writing and English. A Hennessy Award nominee, her debut novel, Flight (2014), was the first publication of the acclaimed Tramp Press and was nominated for an Irish Book Award and a Literary Fiction Award. A new book of personal essays, This Interim Time, is published by The Lilliput Press in May 2025. Oona is working on two collections of essays, The Doughnut Shop and Other Stores and Prosthetic Grass, as well as a novel. She is represented by Brian Langan of The Storyline Agency (https://www.storylineagency.com/).

Oona has supervised students working on transnational literature, trauma studies, and ecocriticism, and is currently supervising projects on trauma, identity and ethics in mid-20th century Irish writing; on contemporary Irish fiction; and on e-waste in literature. She also supervises creative writing PhDs (fiction and creative non-fiction).

Catherine Gander is Associate Professor of American Literature in the Department of English. She specialises in modern and contemporary literature, with particular emphasis on poetry, hybridity, and the interarts. Catherine is also a poet and critic, and many of her creative and research projects combine poetry, art, activism, and performance.

Recent projects involving creative practice and embodied knowledge include Farm Dispatches with choreographer Philippa Donnellan, funded by Creative Ireland — a participatory dance/arts project involving different adult communities in Athy and Naas districts and professional dance-theatre artists. With workshops run by Catherine Gander and Philippa Donnellan, Farm Dispatches invited people to connect and creatively explore themes surrounding farming life, the landscape, and our fractured relationship with the natural world through poetry and dance, conversation and performance. The project ran from 25th August to 4th October 2025. 

Tríona Ní Shíocháin is Head of the School of English, Media, and Creative Arts and Established Professor of Music and Performing Arts at the University of Galway. She formerly held the positions of Professor of Modern Irish and Performing Arts and…

Professor Vicky Hunter is a Practitioner-Researcher and Visiting Research Fellow in Site Dance at Bath Spa University and formerly head of the MA Choreography Programme at the University of Chichester. Her research is transdisciplinary in nature spanning choreographic research and Environmental Humanities and draws on Feminist New Materialisms, Phenomenology, Spatial theory, Critical Geography and Posthumanist theoretical approaches.

Her research explores site dance and corporeal engagements with space, place and lived environments. She adopts an interdisciplinary approach to exploring human-site engagement and frequently collaborates with architects, human geographers, artists and social scientists to develop multi-layered perspectives on contemporary themes and issues (such as social and spatial justice, Anthropocene and ecological discourses and human-nonhuman entanglements). She is a member of the AHRC Peer Review College and the UK’s Dance Research Matters advisory board.

She is co-editor of Encountering Environments Through the Arts: Interdisciplinary Embodiments, Politics and Imaginaries (Routledge 2025) and The Routledge Companion to Site-Specific Performance (Routledge 2025). She is a co-author of (Re) Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Themes (2019) with Melanie Kloetzel (Canada) and Karen Barbour (Aotearoa), and editor of Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance (Routledge, 2015). Her monograph Site, Dance and Body: Movement, Materials and Corporeal Engagement was published with Palgrave in March 2021.

She leads the AHRC funded Dancing Otherwise: Exploring Pluriversal Practices network (Jan 2024 – March 2025) at Bath Spa and is co -convenor of the CPEK research group on embodiment and creative practice with Michelle Elliott, independently she convenes the cross-institutional and interdisciplinary research group on ‘Environment and Experience’.

Forthcoming publications include:

Orlek, J., McAndrew, C., Cerulli, C., Ferreri, M., Hunter, V. (2025) Sticking with the Dance: Diffractive Readings of Care over time, AHRA Critiques, Portsmouth: Architectural Humanities Research Association.

Butterworth J., and Hunter, V. (2026) (eds) Contemporary Choreography 3: A Critical Reader, London: Routledge.

Link to article and video:
https://ecocene.kapadokya.edu.tr/index.php/ecocene/article/view/129
Link to Dancing Otherwise Website: www.dancingotherwise.com
List of images, captions and credits:
Image 1: Dancing / Walking with Trees workshop 2017, Chichester, image V. Hunter
Image 2: Dancing / Walking with Trees workshop 2022, Bath, image V. Hunter
Image 3: Dancing / Walking with Trees workshop 2023, Bath, image V. Hunter
Image 4: Site Dance workshop, Valetta, Malta, 2024, image V. Hunter
Image 5: ‘Dancing Otherwise’ public engagement workshop, South East Dance, Brighton April 2024, image V. Hunter
Image 6: ‘Dancing Otherwise’ public engagement workshop, South East Dance, Brighton, April 2024, image V. Hunter
Image 7: ‘Dancing Otherwise: moving Forwards’ symposium event, University of Kingston, London, Feb 2025, ‘Dancing Otherwise’ public engagement workshop, South East Dance, April 2024, image V. Hunter

Stefano Lombardi Vallauri is associate professor of musicology at the IULM University of Milan, general editor of the scientific journal «Nuove Musiche», president (2024-2026) of the cultural association Athena Musica, coordinator of the IULM unit for the NextGenerationEU project “Sounding images – Screening sounds” funded by the European Union. His research focuses on the aesthetics and analysis of contemporary music, both classical and popular. Among his publications are the monograph Dodecafonia postseriale. Gilberto Cappelli e Federico Incardona (2013); the co-edited works L’adattamento musicale (2024), L’arte orale. Poesia, musica, performance (2020), Jonathan Harvey (2019), La voce mediatizzata (2019); essays and book chapters on topics such as song covers, the experience of intimacy in technologically mediated song, the vocal female counter-order, or focusing on the voice in individual authors (e.g., Guaccero, Galás, Lo Russo, The Andre). He is editing, with Francesca Placanica, an issue of the journal «Nuove Musiche» on Voice and Technology (2025, forthcoming).