Director
Associate Professor Suzanne Little
Suzanne Little is an Associate Professor in Theatre Studies in the School of Performing Arts. Suzanne is an interdisciplinary researcher publishing on political dance, trauma, practice as Research, reflective practice, documentary theatre, and the witness turn in contemporary performance (forthcoming). Suzanne is the vice president of ADSA and a member of FIRT and PSI.
Steering group
Associate Professor Jennifer Cattermole
Jennifer Cattermole is a Senior Lecturer in Music in the School of Performing Arts. Her research interests include music policy and politics, community music-making, and the role of music in reflecting and constructing place and identity. Her research to date has focused on the indigenous musics of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Fiji. She is currently researching the origins and development of Māori and Moriori musical instruments, and working on some multi-sensory, multi-media projects involving Moriori culture.
Dr Christina Ergler
Christina Ergler is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geography. Christina's research lies at the cross-roads of geography, sociology and public health in the minority and majority world. She focuses on the relationships between wellbeing, place and lived everyday experiences. In her research she traces social and environmental injustices drawing from a wider range of social theories including the work of Bourdieu, Gibson and Sen.
Associate Professor Hilary Halba
Hilary Halba is an Associate Professor in Theatres Studies in the School of Performing Arts. She is a teacher, director, actor, producer and dramaturge with over 20 years' experience in New Zealand theatre and education. Her research interests include bicultural theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand, acting methodologies, actor training, documentary theatre, and New Zealand post-colonial theatre.
Associate Professor Karyn Paringatai
Karyn Paringatai is a Programme Co-ordinator for the Master of Indigenous Studies with Te Tumu - School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies. Karyn's research interests are numerous and intersect at various points including sociological issues surrounding Māori urbanisation and Māori identity development and maintenance, Māori performing arts, Māori language and teaching methodology.
Karyn is also a co-director of Poutama Ara Rau, an Otago Research Theme which aims to research how Māori knowledge and teaching and learning pedagogies can transform tertiary teaching to enhance student success.
Sofia Kalogeropoulou
Sofia Kalogeropoulou is a Teaching Fellow in Dance in the School of Performing Arts. A certified member of the Royal Academy of Dance she has taught ballet in professional and community institutions in Greece, London UK, and New Zealand. Her research focuses on dance, culture and national identity, and dance and gender. She also explores the relationship between dance and somatic practices, in particular ballet and Alexander Technique.
Professor Hazel Tucker
Hazel Tucker is a Professor in the Department of Tourism. Her research interests are in heritage tourism, and tourism's relations to cultural change, emotion, colonialism/postcolonialism, tourist narratives and performance, and tour guiding. Her publications include Living with Tourism (Routledge, 2003), Tourism and Postcolonialism (Routledge, 2004), and recent articles on World Heritage, empathy, and apocalyptic subjectivity in tourism.
Dr Susan Wardell
Susan Wardell is a Senior Lecturer in the Social Anthropology programme. Her research interests include care, emotion, and affect, as well as critical approaches to health and wellbeing. With a shared background in Communication Studies, much of her recent work has focused on care, empathy, and morality in the digital sphere; with current projects relating variously to ecological loss, online responses to the Christchurch mosque attacks, and medical crowdfunding. Susan also publishes creative writing and is interested in experimental academic forms.
Previous members
Dr Rosemary Overell
Rosemary Overell is a lecturer in Media, Film and Communication. She completed a doctorate at the University of Melbourne in 2012. Her thesis, Brutal: Affect Belonging In, and Between, Australia and Japan's Grindcore Scenes, explored how fans of grindcore metal music feel 'at home' in scenic spaces and was based on ethnographic research in Osaka, Japan and Melbourne, Australia. Before joining the department at Otago in 2013, Rosemary taught at the University of Melbourne in Cultural Studies.
Publication advisor
Alexander Ritchie
Alexander Ritchie is a Humanities subject librarian for the University of Otago and is part of the steering committee for the Digital Humanities Hub.
Research assistant
Ellen Murray
Ellen Murray is a PhD candidate in Theatre Studies. Her Performance as Research thesis explores magical realism to stage trauma narratives.