Jodie McNeilly is a Doctoral student from The University of Sydney, Australia working on the intersections between phenomenology and performance aesthetics. She is also a dancer, choreographer, teacher and dance critic. Jodie was a Research Fellow at the PRC for three semesters where she was able to deepen her knowledge in the history and contemporary practices of phenomenology under the guidance of the Center’s Director, Professor Anthony J. Steinbock. During this period she was able to complete the first draft of her dissertation: Poetics of Reception: a phenomenological aesthetics of bodies and technologies in performance. Jodie’s dissertation contests an ongoing debate within Performance Studies that views the relationship between live and mediatized forms as either ontologically distinct or the same. In this work she challenges the misappropriation of ontology within the field of representation and demonstrates that a static-genetic phenomenology, which considers the sense formation and structures of interactions from embodied audience reception, is a more useful approach to ontology (Husserl), than these accounts which only inflame debate. Overall the dissertation offers a new phenomenological methodology to the approach of bodies interacting with digital technologies, and points to the possibility of phenomenology as dramaturgy in digital performance practice.

On leaving Carbondale, Jodie will pursue post-doctoral interests formulated during her time at the Center, they include a: project on ‘Morality, Temporality and the Constitution of Sexual Being’; and the ‘Phenomenology as Dramaturgy Project’. Jodie has co-founded the Association for Phenomenology in Performance Studies (APPS); and will collaborate on the PRC’s upcoming Vocations and the Sense of Life project.