Pil Hansen Editor & Author

Pil Hansen is an Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director at the School of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Calgary, Canada; a founding member of Vertical City Performance; and a dramaturg. Her empirical and PaR experiments examine cognitive dynamics of memory and perception in creative processes. With Bruce Barton, she developed the multi-disciplinary research model ‘Research-Based Practice’. Hansen chairs the PSi Working Group on Dramaturgy and Performance; her award-winning creative work has toured nationally and internationally; and her scholarly research is published in Connection Science, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, TDR: The Drama Review, Performance Research, Theatre Topics, and Koreografisk Journal among other journals and ten essay collections on dramaturgy, cognitive performance studies, and research methods. Hansen co-edited the essay collection Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement (2015). Current and recent artistic collaborators are: Kaeja d’Dance, Theatre Junction Grand, Toronto Dance Theatre, and Public Recordings. Bettina Bläsing is a responsible investigator at the Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) at Bielefeld University, Germany. She studied Biology at Bielefeld University and Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Bettina worked as science journalist and editor, and as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and University of Leipzig before joining the Neurocognition and Action Research Group at Bielefeld University in 2006. Her main research interests are mental representations of body, movement and space; the control and learning of complex movements and manual actions; and expertise in dance.