Dr Gillian Arrighi

I am a Senior Lecturer in Creative and Performing Arts. My significant output of published research is in the fields of Circus Studies, Childhood Studies, and Performance Pedagogy, whilst my teaching portfolio encompasses practice, theory, and histories of theatre and performance, for the Creative and Performing Arts major strand of the Bachelor of Arts.

Originally from New Zealand, I relocated to Sydney to do undergraduate studies at the University of New South Wales and a subsequent three-year Diploma of Acting (1984). I spent many years working as a performance collaborator and performer including a decade with the Sydney-based performance group, The Cahoots Company whose creative output spanned indoor and outdoor performance works for museums, festivals, public authorities, high school audiences, and theatre spaces. My interest in dance led me to Spain where I studied Flamenco dance (1985) and upon returning to Australia I continued dance studies and performance for a further decade. My practical experience of contemporary live performance and industry practice also extends to the music industry where I worked for almost seven years developing an understanding of all aspects of the contemporary music industry. During that time I worked for six years as editor of the AustralAsian Music Industry Directory and three years (concurrently) as the editor of the Australian Sports Industry Directory.

In 2003 I completed a practice-led-research Master of Creative Arts that focused on the neutral mask and its pedagogical worth to performers and in 2007 I completed a PhD thesis about the FitzGerald Brothers' Circus, the largest circus working throughout Australasia at the close of the nineteenth century. I received my first appointment (Lecturer) at the University of Newcastle in 2008. 

Research Expertise
Keywords: Circus Studies; Popular Entertainment Studies (Victorian and Edwardian eras, particularly in Australia and New Zealand); Childhood Studies; Role play and simulation education in interdisciplinary education contexts; Improvisation and play as pedagogical paradigms for creative production; Masks as a pedagogical paradigm for the gestural and physical training of performers.

My contribution to the emerging field of Circus Studies is demonstrated through journal articles, conference presentations, book chapters, and a monograph, whilst my contribution to the newly emerging field of Popular Entertainments is demonstrated in my co-editorship of the peer reviewed academic journal Popular Entertainment Studies, contribution to related conferences (both as convenor and as presenter), and the book A World of Popular Entertainments (Cambridge Scholars, 2012) which I co-edited. In 2008 I received a Strategic Pilot Grant to investigate the role of children in the entertainment industry. That research trajectory has drawn me into a global network of researchers and the production of an edited volume published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan, Children and Entertainment: the participation of youth in the entertainment industry (G. Arrighi and V. Emeljanow, eds.). A subsequent external ARC grant for the e-Research project AusStage: Gateway to the Australian Performing Arts has enabled me to develop research in the e-Humanities within a research network that extends to researchers from 18 different Australian Universities. In 2011 I was invited to join the prestigious Emerging Research Leaders Programme at UoN (2011-2012), and in 2014 I was awarded a Visiting Fellowship at the Ransom Center for the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Research Fellowship Endowment, to research the contribution of child performers to the North American entertainment industry.

Teaching Expertise
Contemporary performance and new media technologies.

Devising performance.

Contemporary performance practice.

Popular entertainments.

Australian performance histories.

Performer pedagogies (Stanislavski, Meyerhold, Lecoq, Copeau, Leigh). 

Administrative Expertise
Discipline Convenor, Creative and Performing Arts, 2014

RHD convenor, Creative and Performing Arts, 2013-present 

Hons and RHD convenor, Creative and Performing Arts, Callaghan and Ourimbah, 2012

Discipline convenor, Drama, Callaghan, 2011

Honours and RHD convenor, Drama, 2010-2011

Chair, Research Training Committee, School of Drama, Fine Art and Music, 2010 

Collaborations
My collaborative research interests span performance history and historiography (Circus studies, Childhood studies, Popular Entertainments); the application of performance within interdisciplinary contexts; and e-research. 

Performance histories: A research initiative into the contribution of children to the transnational entertainment industries of the UK and Australasia was commenced in late-2008 with Emeritus Professor Victor Emeljanow and is ongoing. 

Applied performance: Two UoN Teaching and Learning Research Project Grants (2012, $10,000 and 2013 $10,000) are funding creative practice-led research into role-play simulation and professional communication with an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawn from Creative and Performing Arts, Pharmacy, Nursing and Midwifery, Communications, Occupational Therapy, and Physiotherapy. 

E-Research: AusStage: Gateway to the Australian Performing Arts. During the current ARC LIEF-funded phase four, researchers in Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Newcastle (Callaghan) are trialling visualisation and mapping outcomes for their research into live performance in the greater Hunter region (with Assoc Prof David Watt).