Prof. Karen Barbour

Dr. Karen Barbour is an Associate Professor in the School of Arts at The University of Waikato, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is author of Dancing across the page: Narrative and embodied ways of knowing (2011), co-author of (Re)positioning Site dance: Local acts, global perspectives (Barbour, Hunter & Kloetzel, 2019), editor of Dance Research Aotearoa journal, and has published her work widely. Karen has focussed on articulating embodied ways of knowing ourselves, our relationships with others and the environment, drawing on feminist phenomenology, ethnography and creative practice research. Alongside her writing, Karen choreographs site dance, dance theatre performances and creates video dance work exploring relationships to place, wellbeing, sustainability, land contestation and socio-cultural understandings of belonging. Karen’s environmental activism is expressed through her performance, pedagogy and praxis within university education, professional and community contexts.