ResearchWorks: Term Time/A Revolutionary Lexicon for Mother-demics

In this performance lecture, two academic mothers working in the field of contemporary performance attempt to find a lexicon for the synchronous work of motherhood and academia. Dr Laura Bissell and Dr Lucy Tyler are mother-demics, aca-mothers within systems of institutions. As a revolutionary gesture and resistant act, they disrupted their schedules with creative interventions, carving time in term time to understand term time(s) for mother-demics. Drawing on collaborations (of two) in the field of maternal performance such as Lena Šimić and Emily Underwood-Lee (2021, 2022), and critical theory exploring maternal time (Baraitser, 2009, 2017, and Putnam, 2022), they ask: what are the temporal and embodied connections between academic work (in the field of performance) and motherwork? They question maternal-demia and consider how academic work and motherwork can be synchronous. What are the synergies in the temporal registers of these things? How can these be explored by purposefully stitching them together, mapping them, layering them over each other again and again? How can they exist as a palimpsest? (This is how they are lived). In creating a co-authored lexicon, they seek to find a way of performing what they found out through poetry, conversation and speculative thinking.

Speakers:

Dr Laura Bissell is an Athenaeum Research Fellow and Lecturer in Contemporary Performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Laura is author/editor of Performance in a Pandemic, Making Routes and Bubbles: Reflections on Becoming Mother and poetry books A-Z of Sites of Love and Loss and Things there are no words for. Laura’s research interests include: technology, ecology, interdisciplinarity, matrescence, feminism and performance and journeys. She is currently writing a monograph on matrescence and performance (Intellect, 2025) and co-editing the International Journal of Performance Art and Digital Media’s special edition: ‘Matrescence and Media’.

Dr Lucy Tyler is Associate Professor of Performance Practices at the University of Reading. She is a somatic movement facilitator, performance maker, dramaturg and scholar. As a performance maker, Lucy currently makes screendances exploring m/othering, ecosomatics and remains. Lucy’s scholarly work analyses embodied and creative artistic processes, focusing on how artists and writers develop themselves and their work. She is author of numerous articles and chapters on performance development and the forthcoming English Play Development under Neoliberalism (CUP, 2024). She is PI on the Arts Council-Funder Work in Progress (UoR/South Street) which seed-funds and facilitates new performance making. Lucy is a founding co-director of Elements Eco Soma Lab, an intermedial movement research project.

Guildhall School’s ResearchWorks is a programme of events centred around the School’s research activity, bringing together staff, students and guests of international standing. We run regular events throughout the term intended to share the innovative research findings of the School and its guests with students, staff and the public.