Dr Kerry Chappell

About me:

Kerry is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Exeter, where she leads the MA Creative Arts in Education Programme and provides dance expertise to the course. Kerry also leads the Creativity and Emergent Educational Futures Network and is a PhD and EdD supervisor. Her research investigates creativity in arts, science and transdisciplinary education and educational futures, alongside participatory research methodologies. Kerry continues to work as a dance-artist within Exeter-based dance lab collective.

Kerry is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Centre of Creativities, Arts and Science in Education at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen, Norway where she contributes dance and creativity in education expertise.

Interests:

My research investigates how we conceive of and teach for creativity in education (generically, in transdisciplinary ways and within arts/dance) and developing this within effective and meaningful educational futures. Currently this focuses on both Higher Education and school settings in the context of responding to Anthropocentric problems.

My original grounding in dance education (as academic and practitioner) has allowed me to develop a unique perspective by theorising embodied dialogue as the key driver of creativity. This offers an alternative perspective to accounts of educational creativity which see it as an individualised, mind-based, measurable endeavour. Grounded in embodied dialogue, I articulate creativity as collaborative, as incorporating questions of ethical value and affect, and, crucially, as related to the materials and environment in which it happens. I research creativity in a complementary way, using mixed methods, researching ‘with’ teachers/lecturers and children/young people rather than ‘on’ them, and seeking to develop creative teaching and learning practices which respect teachers/lecturers’ professional wisdom and children’s perspectives.

At UoE I lead the Creativity and Emergent Educational Futures Network.

Qualifications:

PCAP/Senior Fellow of HEA, University of Exeter; PhD Dance Education (Trinity Laban); MA Oxon Experimental Psychology