Dr Ben Spatz

• PhD in Theatre, City University of New York, 2013
• BA in The College of Letters, Wesleyan University, 2001

Ben Spatz (they/he) studied history, literature, philosophy, and dance at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Soon afterwards, they moved to Poland for two years, where they worked with the Gardzienice Theatre, Rena Mirecka, and other practitioners influenced by the late Jerzy Grotowski. Ben spent a decade making theatre in New York City and was an Artist in Residence, with Massimiliano Balduzzi, at Movement Research NYC from 2010–2012. Ben's work over more than twenty years is collected on the Urban Research Theater website: https://urbanresearchtheater.com/

Ben’s PhD project at City University of New York (CUNY) became their first book, What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research (2015). This was followed by Blue Sky Body: Thresholds for Embodied Research (2020) and Making a Laboratory: Dynamic Configurations with Transversal Video (2020). These three works provide a conceptual framework and a unique methodology for audiovisual embodied research. Ben’s theory of embodied technique as knowledge is used by practitioner-researchers in dance, music, anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, and education.

Ben’s own artistic research — called the “Judaica project” since 2012 — explores diasporic and decolonial jewishness through performance, writing, and video. Their most recent book, Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place in Artistic Research (2024), brings critical humanities into conversation with artistic and practice-based research. It is deeply informed by North American Black and Indigenous studies and argues for a better understanding of the ongoing impact of race and colonialism in predominantly white institutional spaces.

From 2014 to 2024, Ben was based at University of Huddersfield, where their final role was Reader in Media and Performance and Director of the Centre for Experimental Practices (CXP). With Ben's leadership, CXP organised events focusing on Black Methods; New Laboratories; Whiteness and Sound Studies; and Videographic Entanglements. Ben has been a Visiting Scholar at Oxford and a Research Fellow at Leeds. They are currently working with the nonprofit organisation Intercultural Roots on the EcoGPX® project, funded by Innovate UK.

Ben is founding editor of the Advanced Methods imprint at Punctum Books, as well as the Journal of Embodied Research, an open-access videographic journal published by Open Library of Humanities. JER is the first peer-reviewed academic journal to focus on sharing embodied and emplaced knowledge through video. Submissions are welcome via the journal website: https://jer.openlibhums.org/

Previously I taught theatre and performance studies and practice at all levels. At Birmingham I now teach across a variety of modules in film and creative media.

At present I am looking to supervise PhD research primarily in two areas: 1) projects using experimental methodologies to bring performing arts practice into film and digital media; and 2) projects that involve a serious engagement with critical black studies.

Find out more - our PhD Film Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

My research explores two distinct but related areas:

1) Critical approaches to embodied and artistic research: I offer transdisciplinary critical theory to support and articulate practice research, as well as developing new research methods and methodologies. I am especially interested in video as a medium of thought, including and going beyond existing forms of performance documentation, visual anthropology, and the video essay.

2) Experiments in diasporic and decolonial jewishness (the Judaica project): Focusing on jewishness as a contested identity in the present, and deeply informed by critical Black and Indigenous studies, I apply a decolonial lens to reimagine what jewishness can mean and do. My work in this area is underpinned by decolonial solidarities, including with Palestine, and a strong critique of epistemic whiteness.