Carolyn Watt

With a background in research and cabaret performance, Dr Carolyn Watt has a diverse blend of academic and performance expertise. Currently she is a Research Fellow in international activist art practice working specifically on the Guernica Remakings project in the School of Art and Media at the University of Brighton, UK. Alongside this she is a cabaret circus performer (aerial circus/contortion) and flexibility instructor. Watt is interested in the intersection between circus, performance, and identity. Her research interests focus on community arts-based practices, digital technology as methodologies and practice-based research.

The greater part of her career to date has been within a higher education environment, working on a variety of research projects and more recently lecturing. From 2019 – 2022 Watt taught across the Visual Culture programme in the Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries (CCI) at the University of Portsmouth (UoP) UK. Watt was awarded her practice-based PhD at the University of Portsmouth in 2020. This research was part funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Interreg VA France (Channel) England innovation project PONToon (CCI, UoP), and explored a group of 18-35 year old women’s experiences of learning aerial circus skills integrated with training in digital media technologies within a social circus context.