Dr Lucy Weir is a specialist in dance and performance. She is the author of Pina Bausch's Dance Theatre: Tracing the Evolution of Tanztheater (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and Performance, Masculinity, and Self-Injury (Routledge, 2024). With Laura Bissell, she is co-editor of the essay collection Performance in a Pandemic (Routledge, 2021).

Lucy's new book, What Moves Them: A Global History of Modern Dance will be published by Allen Lane in 2027, and is based on research supported by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2023-24). She is co-editor of the forthcoming Edinburgh Companion to Women and the Avant-Garde with Ruth Hemus (Edinburgh University Press).

In 2020, Lucy was named an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker, and she contributes to various radio programmes.

Lucy obtained her PhD in History of Art and Theatre Studies from the University of Glasgow in 2013. She taught at Glasgow School of Art for five years, and was Visiting Lecturer in Dance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. In 2015, she was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at IASH (University of Edinburgh), before taking up a Teaching Fellowship in History of Art. In 2021, Lucy was appointed Chancellor's Fellow, and promoted to Reader in 2024. She completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice at the University of Edinburgh in 2018, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Lucy previously co-convened SEXES, a cross-ECA research cluster involving early-career researchers and senior faculty in the fields of gender and sexualities. She sits on the steering committee for the University's Gender.ED network. Along with Bev Hood (School of Design), Lucy co-established the Performance Studies Network at Edinburgh.

Lucy maintains a strong interest in the performing arts alongside her academic research. In 2022, she joined the Board of Trustees of the Beacon Arts Centre in Greenock.

Awards and Grants

• 2023 Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship
• 2023 CAHSS Challenge Investment Fund
• 2020 AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker
• 2019 SGSAH Cohort Development Fund (Modernist Methodologies network)
• 2018 ESRC Festival of Social Science Event Award (with Dr Amy Chandler)
• 2015 IASH Postdoctoral Fellowship
• 2013 AHRC Postdoctoral Internship, Glasgow Life
• 2012 Whistler Travel Scholarship
• 2012 University of Glasgow College of Arts Research Support Award
• 2011 DAAD Research Grant
• 2011 AHRC Research Training Support Grant
• 2010 AHRC Doctoral Award​​