Moving through Materescence

This Research & Knowledge Exchange Doctoral Project brief summarises our priority areas of research interest under the heading of: Moving through Materescence: Examining the potential of trauma informed dance practice in amplifying peri-natal mental health narratives and recovery.

We welcome all research degree applications aligned with and in response to this brief.

The psychosocial benefits of dance in a variety of contexts are now widely acknowledged (Chappell et al. 2021). What is more the social prescribing movement and the role that arts organisations play in the general well-being of communities and societies provides evidence that dance is a practice with both measurable and more intangible outcomes that support mental health.  

Materescence – the process of becoming a mother that involves physical, psychological and emotional changes - has been little explored by the medical community; and indeed the medical model shows its limitations when dealing with the intersectional issues that can cause this period to be vastly different depending on lived experience. Maternal mental health is not only significant in its own right but central to ensuring the mental health of future generations, where there has been an exponential rise in conditions such as anxiety and depression in young people.  Furthermore, while post-natal depression is more widely recognised, there are a variety of conditions and experiences unique to this identity reformation that are less researched,  such as peri-natal obsessive compulsive disorder. According to the Maternal Mental Health Alliance new mothers are often not getting the support they need. This project will investigate how dance practice can aid new mothers to find creative agency, somatic awareness and empathic connection through dance practice at a time when their bodies have become attuned to the needs of others over and above their own. Through dance practice underpinned by trauma-informed care, this research will explore embodiment as a mode to support recovery and new understandings. Using theoretical perspectives from feminist and anti-abelist discourse the practice as research is also a way to engage in the multiplicity of narratives that materesence produces through choreographic material, thus resisting the dominant hegemonic narrative of the maternal archetype.   

Projects deriving from this brief are expected to sit within the Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy and the following department.

All successful research degree project proposals must emphasise a clear alignment between the project idea and our Research & Knowledge Exchange strategy.