Background

My PhD thesis, “Embodying Biking: Sport as Live(d) Events”, examined the relationships between thinking, sensing and doing using case studies from mountain bike racing. I undertook this research in the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, where I was awarded a Faculty Teaching Fellowship in 2011.

I have worked in course coordination, lecturing and tutoring roles since 2009. In addition to teaching at the University of Sydney, I have taught in Cognitive Science at Macquarie University, Communications at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and the Performance Practices Department at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA).

Between 2014 and 2017 I worked part time as a research assistant with two interdisciplinary research teams on projects within the Department of Cognitive Science at Macquarie University. One project investigated skilled action and cognition as part of the ARC Discovery Project, “Mindful bodies in action: a philosophical study of skilled movement” led by John Sutton and Doris McIlwain. For the second project, which is ongoing, I am developing a cognitive ethnographic method with colleagues John Sutton and Celia Harris (among several others) to bridge the gap between psychological studies of memory and the real world. This is part of an interdisciplinary project investigating collaborative remembering in older Australians.

I started a postdoctoral researcher position in April 2018, once again working closely with John Sutton and a small but excellent team, the Cognitive Ecologies Lab, in the Department of Cognitive Science at Macquarie University. This work is funded by his Australian Research Council grant, “Cognitive Ecologies: a philosophical study of collaborative embodied skills.” I am an associate member of the Centre for Elite Performance, Expertise and Training (CEPET) and member of the Centre for Scaffolding the Ageing Mind (C-SAM).

This video, shot by Mark Parry, weaves together my work in the media and research worlds, for students of an undergraduate course at Macquarie University called Cognitive Science in the Real World. Other videos in the series are here.

Header image by Gaye Camm