Dr Sophia Lycouris is an academic interested in interdisciplinary research methodologies, including approaches informed by creative practice. She is also an artist working with movement/dance, choreography, improvisation and performance for over than twenty years, who gradually developed a dialogue with new technologies. Sophia trained as a dancer and dance teacher in her native country Greece and holds an MA (dist) in Dance Studies (1991) and a practice-based PhD in Improvisational Performance in Dance (1996) from the University of Surrey (UK).

Between 2007 and 2011, she worked as Director of the Graduate Research School of the Edinburgh College of Art to develop innovative models of doctoral provision and facilitate integration between creative practice and academic approaches. Sophia has contributed to work undertaken in this field by national bodies such as the UK Council for Graduate Education and has supervised to completion ten doctoral students in a variety of areas across the Creative and Performing Arts.

Between 2000 and 2003, Sophia held an Arts and Humanities Research Board Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts at the Nottingham Trent University (UK), focusing on the role of choreographic methods in interdisciplinary and collaborative contexts. She introduced the terms choreographic environmentsand interdisciplinary choreography (see “Choreographic Environments: New Technologies and Movement-related Artistic Work” in Butterworth, J. and Wildschut, L. (eds) Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader, 2009), which informed her subsequent research projects City Glimpses, Haptic Experiments, Emergent Objects – Snake, and Choreography of Social Movement . She is currently co-editing a book on Dance and Wellbeing.

• City Glimpses (external website)
• Haptic experiments

Sophia led courses on movement/dance, body and space, performance, choreography, composition and improvisation at the Nottingham Trent University (1997-2007), and continues to lecture on these topics as well as Research Methods, both at the Edinburgh College of Art/ University of Edinburgh and other Universities, as invited speaker.