PhD Programme

London Contemporary Dance School, The Place

University of the Arts London (UAL) and London Contemporary Dance School (LCDS) at The Place launched in 2024 a new and distinct PhD programme enabling researchers to benefit from the interdisciplinary arts research of UAL and the professional environment, advanced training and artistic research culture of LCDS and The Place. The programme focuses on specialist Postgraduate Research (PhD) degrees, and offers a progression route for MA graduates and artists active or with an interest in research. Its aim is to promote dance, choreography, performance and movement research and to provide student-researchers with a distinctive sense of community. Building on the existing validation partnership between UAL and LCDS, this collaboration will build a cohort of postgraduate research students in dance and related embodied practices within a cross-arts and interdisciplinary framework.Areas of SupervisionWe offer supervision expertise in areas that include, but are not limited to, the following:Creative practice and producing in contextPopular dance practicesConditions of production and postproduction, value and consumption, political economy and neoliberalism Improvisation and collaborative strategies and theories, authorship and collectivity Participation and communities, co-creation and accessibility Leadership in the arts, organisational structure and institutional critique Enchantment, perception, ritual, gesture, protest and carnival Outdoor practice and training, environmental arts practice and activism Dance through a cross-arts and interdisciplinary lens The body in sculpture, fashion and design, film and video, literature, music and visual arts Dramaturgy, curation, dance in galleries and museums Sound and music in performance, sonic arts, contemporary music and movement Screendance, moving image, cinematography and documentary film-making Science and art collaborations, movement in digital arts practices and computing Radical pedagogies, experimental and critical approaches to education and training Contemporary practice in relation to histories and archives Articulation of practice, scores, manifestos, performative and reflective writing Critical Approaches to the archive, embodied legacies, appropriation and repertoire Conceptual art, Fluxus, Judson Dance Theatre and histories of the avant-garde Video art, experimental film and television historiesDecolonising, repairing and activating the archiveMethodologies, contexts and theoretical approachesPractice research and performative methodologies Cultural Studies, Critical Theory, Performance Theory, Psychoanalytic theory, Memory Studies and Atlantic StudiesDance and Politics, Decolonialism, Racial Capitalism, Feminist, Marxist, Queer Approaches to Performance Dance anthropology, auto-ethnography, sensory ethnography, Story and Storytelling Posthumanism, ecology, ("new") materialisms and performing arts Diaspora, indentureship and transcolonial oceanic worlds

London Contemporary Dance School, The Place