Dr. Victoria Thoms

Before doctoral study in the United Kingdom, Victoria trained in ballet, contemporary dance and choreography in Canada as part of her Undergraduate and Master’s Degree. Her research engages with recent debates in performance, gender, and trauma studies to theorise dance as a cultural practice within contemporary society. She recently published Martha Graham: Gender and the haunting of a dance pioneer (2013). Her new research projects looked more specifically at literary theory and trauma studies to understand how dance might be considered a form of bearing witness to upheaval and violence. Victoria is specifically interested in looking at the link between trauma, nation and ballet within a British context. She has published in Dance Research Journal, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Research in Dance Education, Women: a Cultural Review and is presently Chair of the Society for Dance Research in the UK.