Dr Emma McDowell

Profile

Before joining PCI full-time as a Lecturer in Cultural & Creative Industries in 2024, I worked for over 15 years in a variety of producing, marketing and research/evaluation roles in the arts and cultural sector. Most recently I was a Senior Consultant at The Audience Agency, a LAHRI postdoctoral Research Fellow and formed part of the Postdoctoral Research team at the Centre for Cultural Value. In the latter role, I developed a number of resources on evaluation and cultural engagement for practitioners, policy-makers and the wider research community, including the Evaluation Learning Space and Futurelearn online course. 

Supported by a White Rose College of Arts & Humanities doctoral studentship, I completed my PhD at PCI in 2022 on the processes of theatre-making, marketing and audience engagement in contemporary theatre practice through the enactive theoretical framing of participatory sense-making. I have been teaching on PCI modules at both undergraduate and postgradute level since 2019.

Research interests

My work explores how we articulate, communicate and enact cultural value within marketing, evaluation, management, and leadership structures in the arts and cultural sector.

My PhD thesis, titled ‘From transaction to enaction: reframing theatre marketing’, explored how we articulate and communicate the value of live performance. In partnership with HOME Greater Manchester Arts Centre and funded by an AHRC White Rose College of Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH) doctoral studentship, I proposed that art, and theatre in particular, is not a simple product that provides universal benefits to everyone, but one that relies on the situated interaction of individuals in a particular time and space. By applying theories from the enactive school of embodied cognition to the processes of theatre-making, audiencing, arts marketing and our understanding of cultural value, I argue for the significant potential in reframing these terms anew as reliant on embodied and intersubjectively distributed languaging practices of audience, theatre-maker and cultural intermediary.

Prior to working in academia, I held a number of roles in the arts and cultural sector in arts marketing, audience development, producing and programming and evaluation. This professional experience fuels and informs my research interests, including how notions of cultural value are articulated, communicated and enacted through both arts management and policy processes. My research interests continue to be informed by ongoing collaborations and interdisciplinary partnerships with researchers and practitioners working in the field of creative and cultural industries.

Qualifications

• PhD (2022) School of Performance & Cultural Industries, University of Leeds
• MA (2009) Arts Administration & Cultural Policy, Goldsmiths College University of London
• BA (2008) Drama & French Studies, University of Birmingham

Professional memberships

• Theatre & Performance Research Association (TaPRA)
• Neurodiversity in/and Creative Research Network