Professorial Lecture by Professor Karen Barbour

What can dancing bodies teach us about belonging, environmental and climate change, and the futures we are creating together? 'Embodiment, site dance and place-based research' by Professor Karen Barbour. The arts provide a vital means of making sense of who we are, individually and collectively, revealing the ways identity, community and place shape our lives. Creative practice research in dance foregrounds embodied experience, generating insights that cannot be accessed through words or data, and encouraging critical reflection on how we understand ourselves and the world around us. At a time when environmental and climate change are profoundly reshaping our relationships with place, embodied forms of knowledge can offer important insights into how these transformations are lived and felt. Dance not only makes our embodied experiences visible, but also opens ways of imagining and creating possible futures. Grounded in Waikato, Professor Karen Barbour traces a journey shaped by place-based creative practice, a commitment to growing local dance communities, and collaborations that span disciplines and continents. Drawing on recent work in site dance and ecological somatics, she considers how dance, education, and the arts can help us think differently about the environment, and how creative practice can support both learning and action in a rapidly changing world. This lecture demonstrates Karen’s sustained commitment to expanding the traditional boundaries of academia, representing knowledge through dance, screendance, photographs and forms of creative writing. Karen’s embodied practices enable insights and offer opportunities to investigate the aesthetics of the Anthropocene, reimagining the more-than-human world as a practice of hope. Photo credit: Dr Rodrigo Hill, 2022 This public lecture will be held at the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, starting at 5.45pm. Ticket scanning and Opus Bar will be open from 5pm. Free parking is available on campus via Gate 2B, Knighton Road, Hamilton from 4.30pm. Please register your attendance by clicking on the 'select tickets' button above and bring your eticket with you on the evening to be scanned. If you would like to hear from us about future Public Lectures held at the University of Waikato, please join click HERE to join our mailing list. Photo credit: Michaela Kerr in Nepal, 2020 Professor Karen Barbour is Professor in Te Kura Toi School of Arts at The University of Waikato. Her research focuses on dance, somatics, embodied ways of knowing, place-based research, and site dance, with a strong emphasis on international collaboration and interdisciplinary research. A University of Waikato alumna and the first graduate to complete a PhD in Dance in Aotearoa New Zealand, Karen has spent 25 years as a Waikato academic. She has held a range of leadership roles, including Head of Te Kura Toi School of Arts, and is recognised for her contributions to dance scholarship, creative practice, and arts education. Karen is the author and co-editor of several influential publications, including (Re)Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Perspectives, Co-Lead of the 2026-2029 Dance Landings research project funded by the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council, and recipient of a Fulbright New Zealand Scholar Award. Her work continues to shape dance research and practice both nationally and internationally.