Hi! My Name is Tia-Monique and I am excited to join Dunham’s Data as a Dance History Postdoctoral Research Assistant. My research and PhD deal with African and African Diasporic movement aesthetics. I theorise movement in this area through an interdisciplinary approach that works from an embodied understanding (through my own practice) and considers the historical and socio-economic impact of dance making. These projects were primarily concerned with the way that Africanist movement travels across the African Diaspora as Black Cultural Traffic and functions as a tool to (re)create identity. In particular, my AHRC and Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Programme project took a historiographic approach, piecing together the biographies of my case study artists — H Patten, Greta Mendez, Jamila Johnson-Small and Akiem Toussaint Buck — from archives that were predominately internet-based, including information from censuses, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, social media comments, online reviews, programmes, fliers, and websites.
To Dunham’s Data I bring a research practice that seeks to find answers and possibilities through interdisciplinary enquiry, attention to detail, and an embodied knowledge and understanding of, and passion for African and African Diasporic dance forms and the discourses that surround them. I am looking forward to bringing these skills to this research project and the digital humanities methodologies it is using. I believe that this project will have an impact across the Black Atlantic and a significance both within and beyond academia. I am delighted to be a part of the team.