ARTISTIC EDUCATION COURSES

AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: COMPOSING EXPERIENCE THROUGH PERFORMANCE

Workshop Format and Delivery

This workshop combines autoethnographic methods and practice-as-research methodologies, drawing from performance, choreography, and theater-based techniques. Participants engage in writing, movement, and vocal activities to articulate and analyze cultural experience as singular, collective, and evolving.

Designed for BA, MA, and doctoral students, the workshop is tailored to students in disciplines including peace and conflict studies, performance, artistic research, critical theory, design, and education. It is offered in a variety of formats:

  • One or two-day workshops

  • Week-long intensives

  • Full-semester courses

Workshops are delivered in-person or online, and can be embedded into existing programs or taught as stand-alone modules. Outcomes may include performances, academic essays, participatory projects, public dialogues, or digital and visual interventions.

This course is an invitation to critically reflect on power relations, cultural selfhood, and the performance of identity in response to social norms. Students develop a practice-as-research portfolio, beginning with individual reflection and culminating in a socially engaged participatory work.

  • [[image]] B
    Masterclass for MA students in Artistic Research, The Royal Academy of Art, The Hauge, 2021


    Explore personal and political narratives through performance as research.

    AUTOETHNOGRAPHY: COMPOSING EXPERIENCE THROUGH PERFORMANCE
    A Workshop for BA, MA, and Doctoral Students in Art, Design, and Critical Humanities Programs

    This workshop introduces students to autoethnography as both a generative artistic methodology and a critical tool for performative research. Participants engage in embodied practices including writing, vocalization, and somatic movement to investigate how personal experience operates as material and method in contexts shaped by power, perception, and belonging.

    Students will examine how performance can act as a form of theory, archive, and cultural intervention. Outcomes may include short performances, conceptual mappings, visual research documentation, or frameworks for future projects rooted in self-knowledge and collaborative critique.

    Ideal for students in: Performance Studies, Artistic Research, Critical Design, Fine Arts, Visual Cultures, and Interdisciplinary Humanities.

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  • [[image]] Performative Interventions

    Intensive workshop for MA Peace & Conflict students at The University of of Innsbruck, 2023

    Use embodied methods to analyze identity and social dynamics in conflict contexts.

    In this course, participants learn to respond to conflicts that arise in multicultural and multilingual contexts by conducting collective research and facilitating translations within a group. They also learn to resignify theory based on autoethnographic research methods. The goal is to form theory collectively through embodied research, devise approaches that deepen conventional techniques used in contexts of conflict, and strategize how to activate these techniques in designing interventions. In contexts of collective action, resignifying theory seeks to challenge dominant power structures by integrating personal narratives informed by autoethnographic research.

    This intensive workshop expands upon the concepts and practices in Autoethnography: Composing Experience Through Performance by connecting participants’ phenomenological and bodily experiences of the theory and relating it to their personal experiences, so deeper understandings of cultural nuance are gained. The purpose is to form theory collectively through embodied knowledge, devise approaches that deepen conventional techniques often used in contexts of conflict, and strategize how to activate these techniques through multilingual communication frameworks in interventions where English is the primary language spoken, but not the only language used by those affected. 

    Thematic modules are grouped into the following areas:

    [[ul]] Autoethnography | Practice-as-Research | Ethics of Facilitating Collective Processes | Documentation: Modes of Translation | Resignifying Theory | Embodiment: Image & Movement | Devising Strategies for Participation

    At the end of this workshop, participants will understand how theoretical knowledge can be embodied, enacted, and translated using various performative approaches. They will be able to use performativity as a method of intervention to reshape unjust social realities and discriminatory cultural norms through non-normative strategies for nonviolent participation. Additionally, participants will gain proficiency in applying autoethnographic methods and practice-as-research methodologies for collective participation in multilingual contexts.

    Participants will use content in their autoethnographic journal to reflect on their process and experience of discovering new perspectives on cultural selfhood and the ways it evolves across varying cultural, social, and political contexts. The content in the autoethnographic journal will be used to shape a project that is an existing work-in-progress. Projects might include writing an academic article collaboratively, designing a participatory research program, or facilitating a public dialogue. The collective documentation of the group’s autoethnographic outcomes will be organized in a shared professional portfolio that contextualizes what was learned throughout the course. 

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  • [[image]] Practice-as-Research
    Formulations of Assembly, Workshop-as-Event, Mare Culturale Urbano, Milan, 2017

    Learn embodied tools to foster inclusive and relational learning environments.

    This workshop explores how..

    This workshop explores how embodied, arts-based research can support educational practices grounded in relational ethics, cultural humility, and critical reflection. Through writing, movement, and voice work, participants learn to investigate their own positionality and develop performative tools for facilitating inclusive, participatory learning environments.

    Autoethnography is introduced not only as a reflective method, but as a pedagogical strategy for designing curriculum, guiding dialogue, and engaging with students across linguistic, cultural, and experiential difference. Workshop outcomes may include solo performances, educational interventions, or multimodal documentation of learning processes.

    Ideal for students in: Arts Education, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Leadership, Curriculum Design, and Teacher Training Programs.


    Participants will develop a practice involving creative expression that also contributes to broader knowledge production. They will explore how to engage with theoretical concepts and ideas through their artistic work, and conversely, how theoretical insights can inform and enrich artistic practice. Through interdisciplinary exploration, participants will use practice-as-research methods, a framework where artistic practice becomes a form of research, fostering cross-pollination of ideas and methodologies.

    This intensive course expands upon the concepts and practices in Autoethnography: Composing ExperienceThrough Performance and Performative Interventions in Contexts of Collective Action by combining performance-making techniques with visual practices. Participants will workshop a work-in-progress by developing frameworks and tools that help them better articulate their theoretical and embodied knowledge in creative-academic research contexts. The goal is to enhance their ability to activate their ideas and findings in a final project that is ready for a live audience or viewing.

    Thematic modules are grouped into the following areas:

    [[ul]] Autoethnography | Practice-as-Research | Embodiment: Image & Movement | Resignifying Theory | Situating Your Practice | Phenomenology: Mapping Bodily Experience | Processes of Deconstruction Through Diagrammatic Mapping | Ethics of Facilitating Collective Processes | Documentation: Modes of Translation | Evaluation & Critique | Devising Strategies for Participation | Exhibition, Performances & Public Events

    At the end of this course, participants will have developed a strong authorial voice, demonstrating the ability to deconstruct and connect structural relations between their chosen medium, social group, and process. They will draw from content in their autoethnographic journal to reflect on their process of deconstructing ways in which cultural, social, and political contexts shape and produce social identities. Documentation of this process, combining autoethnographic methods with practice-as-research methodologies will be used as source material. Learnings will be used to create a socially engaged, participatory project where dialogue is facilitated on a small scale. Possible formats may include one-to-one performances, installations, or virtual interventions. 

    Participants will collaboratively develop a curatorial concept and co-curate an event together, exhibiting everyone’s projects. This large-scale group project can take the form of a performance, exhibition, or a combination of both. Each participant will share the role of facilitating a dialogue with the public about the social justice topics raised by the group, offering reflections on how themes align with the curatorial concept. The final outcomes and learnings, starting from devising small-scale projects to collectively co-creating a large-scale project, will be documented in a professional portfolio.

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