Greer Crawley

Greer Crawley

Dr

  • TW20 0EX

Personal profile

Personal profile

I am a researcher and practitioner with interests in landscape design, scenography, exhibition design and curation. Working with artists, designers, and curators, I bring a scenographic perspective to collaborative projects between performance, arts, science and technology. My current research concerns the scenographic encounters and exchanges created within oceanic space and through fluid imaginaries. The project ‘Imagined Ecologies: Scenographies of the Sea’ explores historical and contemporary costume and performance in the context of the sea and ocean imaginaries; how the creative imagination and the materiality of costume and scenography is transformed by the possibilities offered by underwater perspectives and experience.

I received a MAS (Masters of Advanced Studies in Scenography) from The University of the Arts, Zurich and a DrPhil from the Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies, University of Vienna for my dissertation ‘Strategic Scenography-Staging the Landscape of War’, which identified the diverse scenographic strategies employed to rehearse and to stage war by means of constructing landscapes as mobile and ever-changing mise en scènes.

An Associate of the Museums Association and a Director of the Society of British Theatre Designers, I was on the Selection panel for SBTD Staging Places exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial 2019 and V&A Theatre and Performance Galleries and The National Centre Craft and Design 2020. I was co-curator for Costume at the Turn of the Century at the Bakhrushin State Central Museum in Moscow in 2015 and co-curator Scenofest Architecture World Stage Design in 2013, UK. I curated Traces of the Future: archaeology of modern science in Africa, at The Nunnery Bows Arts in 2017 and am a member of the Material: Art : Science : Environment : Research (MASER) group at Bath Spa University a forum that addresses questions around overlapping developments in the Arts and Sciences, both historically and today. (https://www.bathspa.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/research-centres/art-research-centre/material-art-science-environment-research/)

I have taught at Buckinghamshire New University, London College of Fashion, Central Saint Martins, Central School of Speech and Drama, and University of the Arts, Zurich.

Since 2015 I have been collaborating with Curators at Royal Holloway to create projects as part of the curriculum for Design for Performance that involve creating environments and driving narratives to explore themes of war, weather, climate, and sustainability.

These projects have involved working with other colleagues across the university, and with external collaborators and institutions outside of Royal Holloway, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Farnborough Air Sciences Trust. The students of Design for Performance in their analysis and response to The Wind Tunnels Q121 and R52, Heritage Buildings, in Farnborough, Hampshire created speculative designs for the staging of Brecht’s radio play Der Ozeanflug/Flight Over the Ocean. The project and their work were presented at Picturing the Weather the COP26 Forum Royal Holloway, November 2021.

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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