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Personal statement 

Kerrie Reading is a practitioner-researcher in the School of Music and Performing Arts at ºÚÁÏÕýÄÜÁ¿, where she joined the department in 2022, having previously worked at Cardiff Metropolitan University. Her research is situated at the intersection of performance practice and embodied research, with a particular interest in the relationship between performance, place, politics and the archive.
 
Kerrie’s practice-based PhD examined how historical approaches to making alternative performance might be reconsidered in contemporary contexts. Focusing on the venue and archive of Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, the research explored the relationship between historical performance practices, archival materials and contemporary processes of making. Her earlier MPhil in Performance investigated sites of performance, with particular emphasis on socially deprived urban areas. Her initial training in Contemporary Performance Practice established her interest in devised and experimental approaches to performance-making.
 
Her current research focuses on the body as a site of performance, with particular emphasis on the relationship between trauma and performance. This research considers the ways in which embodied experience can be understood, articulated and represented through performance. 
 
Kerrie’s research is grounded in an extensive professional practice as a performer, theatre-maker and practitioner. She has developed and presented performance work in a range of contexts and locations with her former company Needless Allies. She was also an associate performer with theatre-makers Stan’s Cafe, touring internationally to festivals and venues. Her collaborative practice has included devising new performance work with Talking Birds, Cyrff Ystwyth and Ali Matthews, alongside her work as a solo performer.
 
Her publications include an article on community theatre in the Alicante Journal of English Studies (2021), as well as chapters in Experiencing Liveness in Contemporary Performance (Routledge, 2016) and The Routledge Companion to Twentieth-Century British Theatre and Performance: Volume II, 1950–2000 (Routledge, 2025). Her practice-as-research performances have been presented at Chapter Arts Centre (2013), Camden People’s Theatre (2014) and Aberystwyth University (2015).

Academic qualifications

• PhD (Aberystwyth University 2012-2016)
• MPhil (Birmingham University 2010-2012)
• MDrama (University of Kent 2003-2007)

Professional memberships

• Fellow of Advance HE

Teaching specialisms

• Devised Performance
• Experimental Performance
• Archival and oral histories in performance making
• Ensemble theatre making
• Site-based theatre making 

Areas of research supervision

Kerrie is currently supervsing two PhD students and invites enquiries from potential candidates. Her areas of interest include:

• Site-Specific Practices
• Oral Histories and Archives
• Community Theatre/Applied Theatre
• Devised Theatre
• The Body as a site of Performance-Making