Dr Misha Myers

Dr. Misha Myers is a Senior Lecturer in Art & Performance, Course Director of Creative Arts and Research Fellow in Deakin Motion Lab at Deakin University. Through her research  she seeks to empower isolated and marginalized groups including refugees and asylum seekers, women and rural communities, through new arts-based methods perfected and tailored to each new need of community, NGO, and industry partners. She has done this in a global context through creating place-based performances and artworks that are staged and move between physical and digital environments and enable diverse perspectives, knowledges and experiences of place and how it matters politically, socially, economically and environmentally. She works across an inter-disciplinary field of applied and digital performance, socially engaged practice, digital humanities and cultural studies of migration, belonging and place.

Dr. Myers's research research has attracted $500,762 in funding (Cat. 1-3) to lead and collaborate on impact-driven research projects with inter-disciplinary teams, partners from industry and universities in Australia, UK and India as Co-investigator on ARC Discovery Project ‘Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism and Socially Engaged Art’ ($257, 529; 2020-2023); as Principal Investigator on UK Arts Humanities Research Council Grant (AH/L503605/1)  plus in-kind support for an UnBox Fellowship in India ($42,167 in Cat. 1 equivalent funding; 2013-2014); as Chief Investigator for two projects funded by European Social Fund II ($144,387; Grant Number 011200NCO5; 2011-2014); and through European Championship Games Festival Commission ($47,500; 2018) Monash Community Arts Grants ($4000; 2017) Lancaster University Catalyst Award ($3479; 2013) and other paid commissions.

     As an Arts Humanities and Research Council UnBox Fellow in India (2013) she was successful in attracting AHRC UnBox Follow on funding to partner with India-based NGO Digital Green and lead as Chief Investigator a team including IIT Bombay Human Computer Interaction and Visual Ethnography experts, UK game developer and India animation practitioner to co-design a social impact game with farmers in India. The project was play-tested with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Rural Development, UK Department for International Development, world-leading NGOs (Oxfam, US-aid), philanthropic foundations (Gates Foundation) and attracted a Catalyst Award from Lancaster University (2013).

     Myers attracted a grant from the European Fellowship Fund II to fund a PhD studentship for the ‘Designing Landscape Narrative Experience with Locative Media’. The PhD student Lucy Frears, successfuly completed the studentship in 2016 and won a Collections Trust Award in 2014 for the located oral history app 'Hayle Churks' developed as part of the project.

     As part of Myers' PhD research, she created the award-winning interactive multimedia storytelling platform 'way from home' (2004) with UK inhabitants of refugee and asylum seeker background to map their remembered landscapes of home. The platform was published and commissioned by Performance Research Journal and attracted an AOL Innovations in the Community Award.

     She was the recipient of a Japan Foundation Fellowship to train with the Japanese theatre director Suzuki Tadashi in his method of acting in Toga, Japan (2000). She has trained professionally in acting, directing and composition for theatre since 1995 with Anne Bogart and the Saratoga International Theatre Institute from New York, USA.

Dr. Myers' research is practice-based and all about creating and researching mobile and digital storytelling experiences that are interactive, place aware, location-based. She is exploring not only the use of digital technologies as tools, devices and environments for performance and storytelling, but how digital storytelling can be leveraged for community engagement and social innovation.  Her work takes place across multiple platforms through live performances, games, installations, audio walks, radio broadcasts, or online artworks. It is often collaborative in process drawing together culturally diverse participants and teams with different disciplinary expertise to work towards bridging communities and solving challenging social problems through arts-based enquiry enabled by digital technologies.

Myers was recognised as a Higher Education Academy Fellow in 2007 through the accredited and internationally recognised peer reviewed professional recognition program.

Dr. Myers has trained professionally in Suzuki Acting Method and Viewpoints Improvisation, and directing and composition for theatre since 1995 with Anne Bogart and the Saratoga International Theatre Institute from New York, USA, and in Suzuki Acting Method with Suzuki Tadashi in Toga, Japan in 2000. She teaches devising, improvisation and acting for theatre and performance based on her years of training with these directors and their companies. An experienced postgraduate research supervisor and examiner, Dr. Myers has expertise to supervise practice-based research across contemporary art forms and disciplines that are place-based, involve interaction with and participation of audiences and communities, and/or use creative technologies including networked, online, virtual/augmented reality, immersive, mobile and located tools, devices and environments. She is particularly interested in supervising projects exploring issues, challenges and skills of performing and/or creating experiences that involve a mix of live and recorded action, move between virtual and physical worlds and involve interaction between performers and audiences and performers and technology.

ACA100 Introductory Creative Studio; ACP 324 Ensemble Performance: Dramaturgy and Devising (A); ACP 326 Ensemble Performance: Dramaturgy and Devising (B)

Dr. Misha Myers works across an inter-disciplinary field of applied and digital contemporary performance, socially engaged practice, digital humanities and cultural studies of migration, belonging and place. Her work takes place across multiple platforms through live performances, games, installations, audio walks, radio broadcasts, or online artworks. It is often collaborative in process drawing together culturally diverse participants and teams with different disciplinary expertise to work towards bridging communities and solving challenging social problems through arts-based enquiry enabled by digital technologies.

An experienced postgraduate research supervisor with three PhD's mentored successfully to completion and external examiner of PhD's, MRes and MFA's at institutions in Australia and the UK, Dr. Myers has expertise to supervise practice-based research across contemporary and inter-disciplinary forms of performance. She is particularly interested in supervising projects that: exlpore performance that moves between physical and digital environments through immersive, interactive and/or located forms and technologies of performance; relate to experiences of migration, place and belonging and/or involve co-design, participatory, arts-based and/or digital humanities methods for research and performance.

Dr. Misha Myers works across an inter-disciplinary field of applied and digital performance, socially engaged practice, digital humanities and cultural studies of migration, belonging and place. Her research has involved and sought to bring attention to and understanding of knowledges, contributions and experiences of isolated and marginalized groups including refugees and asylum seekers, women and rural communities, through new arts-based methods perfected and tailored to each new need of community, NGO, and industry partners. She has done this in a global context through creating place-based performances and artworks that are staged and move between physical and digital environments and enable diverse perspectives, knowledges and experiences of place and how it matters politically, socially, economically and environmentally.

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Selected Keynotes and Invited Presentations
2017 ‘Future of Storytelling’, Digital Writers Festival, Australia Centre for the Moving Image, Invited Panelist
2017 ‘Moving Out of Door: Moving practices in the artistic labour of women’ symposium, Deakin University, Keynote
2015  AHRC – British Council UnBox Showcase, Institute Contemporary Arts, London, Invited Speaker
2015  Creative Industries Research Institute, University of South Wales, Keynote Speaker
2015  Edinburgh Centre for the History of the Book Seminar Series, University of Edinburgh, Keynote speaker
2014  Impossible Constellation: Practice-Led Research Special Event, University of Lincoln, Invited speaker
2014  Beyond the Book Symposium, Devon Guild of Craftsmen, University of Exeter, Invited speaker
2013 Effectiveness of ICT for Rural Development, Digital Green, Delhi
2013  Research Councils UK Celebrating Collaborations Plenary, British Council High Commission, New
Delhi, Invited poster presentation
2013  Expanded Narrative Symposium, University of Plymouth, Invited speaker
2013  Mobility Futures, Lancaster University, Catalyst Bursary exhibition, workshop and presentation
2013  Community Engagement and the Arts: Performing Landscapes and Identities, University of East London,
Invited speaker
2013  UnBox Festival, New Delhi, Invited speaker
2012  Sideways Festival ‘Setting Out’ symposium, Belgium, Invited keynote speaker
2012  ‘Walking Sans Frontieres’ Panel, Slow Marathon, Deveron Arts, Huntly, Invited speaker
2011  Walking and Landskip Knowledge (W.A.L.K) symposium, Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh/University
of Sunderland, Invited plenary speaker
2010  Fine Art Visiting Lecturer series, Oxford Brookes University, Invited speaker
2009  Mobility and Nomadicity Symposium, University of Limerick, invited speaker
2008  ROAM: Walking Arts Festival Seminar, Loughborough, University, Invited speaker and festival respondent
2006  Creative Community Development, DCC Granollers, Spain, Invited speaker 
2004  Art in the Age of Terrorism, Millais Gallery, Invited speaker in series of talks from exhibition    

Conferences and Symposia Organised

2017 ‘Theatre as Memory Work’, Centre for Theatre and Performance, Monash University
2015  ‘Where to?; Steps Towards the Future of Walking Arts Practices’ with the AHRC Walking Artist Network, Falmouth University; Role: Lead Investigator/Organiser
2015  ‘I, Audience’, Falmouth University; Role: Lead Investigator/Organiser
2014 Workshop/Symposium, GeoHack, Fascinate 2014, Falmouth University. Role: Lead Investigator/Organiser
2013  Sandpit/Symposium, Rock Jam & being IN [landscape] seminar 2: A shared exploration of a Cornish Quarry, in partnership with Andrew Whall and Cornwall Autonomous Zone, Falmouth University; Role: Lead Investigator/Organiser
2013  ‘Storying Futurescapes’; Role: Lead Investigator/Organiser
2012  Sandpit, Locative Media and Landscape Stewardship; Role: Lead Investigator/Organiser
2012  Symposium and Festival of Performances, Now Everybody Sing; Role: Lead Investigator/Organiser
2011-2015 Raising Glasney Lecture Series, Falmouth University; Role: Lead Investigator/Organiser
1999  Performance Studies International 9: Here Be Dragons Performance Festival, Centre for Performance Research, University of Wales, Aberystwyth; Role: Assistant Producer
1998  Points of Contacts: Performances, Places, Pasts, Centre for Performance Research, University of Wales, Aberystwyth; Role: Assistant Producer

Dr. Myers is on the Editorial Board of Research in Drama Education: Journal of Applied Theatre & Performance, peer-reviews for a number of international journals across the arts, humanities and media, and regularly reviews grant applications for the UK Research Council as a member of the AHRC Peer Review College since 2012. 

Dr. Myers has contributed to the evaluation and accreditation of a number of undegraduate and postgraduate taught courses as an External Examiner and Validation Panel member at Australian and UK HE institutions.

Panel member for the ‘The Future of Storytelling’ ACMI Conversations event at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (24 October 2017).: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMbRJYPVAj4

Guest on Afternoons with Richelle Hunt, ABC Radio Melbourne, 23 October 2017

Myers' project ‘The Walking Library’ co-created with Heddon was referenced in The Art of Now: Women Who Walk, BBC R4 (8 Oct 2018) as a prominent example of women walking artworks and featured in The Janice Forsyth Show, BBC Radio Scotland (17 Feb 2015), in the vodcast ‘The Walking Library: an interview by My Bookcase’, and Resonance FM’s Er Outdoors: Women in the Open - Stories of Walking (11 July 2016).
 

Research Fellow in Deakin Motion Lab

AOL Innovation in the Community Award (2004)

Catalyst Award, Lancaster University (2013)

• Australia Research Council Discovery Project ‘Staging Australian Women’s Lives: Theatre, Feminism and Socially Engaged Art’, Co-Investigator (2020-2022)
• ‘Venetian Blind’, contributing artist in collaborative public art installation and artwork as part of ‘Personal Structures
  Exhibition at European Cultural Centre in conjunction with Venice Biennale #52, Venice, Italy (2019)
• 'The Walking Library' project (2012-ongoing) most recently including: 'The Walking Library for Wild City', European Championship Games Festival Glasgow (2018); 'The Walking Library for Women Walking', as part of Walking Women at Utopia Festival, Somerset House, London, and Forest Fringe, Edinburgh Festival and 'The House that Heals the Soul' exhibition at Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2016-2017)
• 'Theatre as Memory Work' with Barking Spider Visual Theatre Comany, funded by Monash Community Grant (2017)
• ‘Play to Grow: Augmenting Agriculture with Social Impact Games’ in partnership with NGO Digital Green, funded by UK Arts Humanties Research Council (2013)
• 'Augmenting Impact through Social Media’ research project with WildWorks Theatre company, funded by European Social Fund II (2011-2014)
• ‘Designing Landscape Narrative Experience with Locative Media’, HDR studentship with commercial partner Treasure Trails, funded by European Social Fund II (2011-2014)