Digital Black Dance Ecologies Network is Established
Congratulations to Dr Tia-Monique Uzor, Lecturer in Contemporary African and Caribbean Diasporic Performance, who has been awarded research grant funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Dance Research Matters Network to establish the Digital Black Dance Ecologies Network. The funding will support research and activities undertaken by the Network through March 2025.
Through the investigation of contemporary African and African diasporic dance, Digital Black Dance Ecologies explores, from an embodied understanding, how digital Black dance practices illuminate the junctures of social and ecological injustice and offer strategies for imagining black futures through the ideas of fugitivity and belonging. The network brings together scholars, artists, practitioners, and artist-researchers whose work explicitly and implicitly explores social and environmental injustice across black geographies in both physical and digital spaces. These interlocutors are brought together to exchange practices and ideas in order to stimulate new thought, exploratory practice, and original research.
Working with partners and collaborating organisations including Serendipity Institute for Black Arts and Heritage, The Royal Geographical Society, Birmingham Open Media and Barnard College, Columbia University, the network aims to catalyse digital Black dance research and practice by fostering creativity, community, and collaboration among artists and researchers within and beyond the field.
Across 18 months, the Digital Black Dance Ecologies team will:
Facilitate a series of events and activities across the UK and the USA including exploratory laboratories, round-table discussions, and structured exchange sessions culminating in a conference and arts evening.
Support the research and development work of Black dance artists through the awarding of ten bursaries bespoke digital, media, and technology training with Birmingham Open Media and several seed commissions across the areas of film, immersive, multimedia and digital performance
Stimulate critical discussion and analysis and build community through the establishment of a collective reading group.
Build infrastructure around digital Black dance scholars and research by offering Early Career Research Mentorship and PhD workshops for Black postgraduate students.
Facilitate a workshop and curate a digital installation at the annual Royal Geographical Society conference. This work will culminate in a conference, which will be held at Central in Spring 2025.
Dr Tia-Monique Uzor is a dance scholar and artist who writes and publishes around issues of identity, cultural traffic, popular culture, and women within African and African Diasporic Dance. She trained in contemporary dance and drama and further supplemented her dance training through international programmes at Ecole des Sables, Senegal. At Central, Dr Uzor teaches across theatre, performance, and movement courses. Her research combines Africanist performance and technique, Black studies, screendance, digital humanities, cultural geography, and postcolonial theory to highlight how embodied ways of knowing can deepen an understanding of Black identities, cultures, and society.
Speaking about the Digital Black Dance Ecologies Network, Dr Tia-Monique Uzor said:
“I am absolutely thrilled to have to be one of the recipients of this much needed funding to catalyse the dance field. Digital Black Dance Ecologies will not only cultivate new ideas in relation to Africanist dance and digital performance but also provide Black dance artists and researchers the opportunity to build community and real skills they can take forward into their practice. I am excited to see this project unfold over the next year.”
Digital Black Dance Ecologies is one of five dance networks to receive dedicated research grant funding from the AHRC’s Dance Research Matters Network. The ecosystems created by these five Networks traverse across South Asian dance, digital Black dance, future dance ecologies, critical dance pedagogies, and pluriversal dance practices. All projects will run through March 2025 and will be mapped for reach and impact in and beyond the dance sector. The aims of the networks as a whole include raising the profile and value of dance as a research area, promoting the diversity of dance cultures, connecting dance disciplines and cultures together to enable future collaborations, and supporting and empowering early career researchers and artists.
Dr Uzor is the principal investigator for the Digital Black Dance Ecologies Network and is the only Early Career Researcher to be successfully awarded funding through the Dance Research Matters .
You can find out more about the Dance Research Matters Networks by visiting One Dance UK or the AHRC website.
You can learn more about Digital Black Ecologies and about Dr Tia-Monique Uzor on Central’s website.