People
The skillsets of researchers working on the South Holderness Eco-Arts project are wide-ranging and reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the work undertaken.
Expertise within the team includes environmental and marine science, literary and historical analysis, and creative arts practice research in poetic writing, dance and movement, time- and site-specific performance, field recording, and musical composition.
This page contains summary profiles of researchers working on the project, with links to more detailed information about each team member.
Christian Billing
PROJECT LEAD
Christian Billing’s research considers site, place, space, performance and the environment through both conventional publications and practice research.
His work includes several published volumes on stage space and scenography, and more recent projects relating to social justice for victims of physical violence (at New York University) and issues of environmental sustainability (his EPSRC-funded audio artwork dealing with plastics pollution, and the move towards a circular plastics economy, 2021).
Christian is currently working on a number of ecological and environmental practice research projects that consider the interrelation of site, place and people in acts of environmental stewardship. He is particularly interested in developing the role of arts methodologies within social and environmental science research.
Anna Fitzer
CO-INVESTIGATOR
Dr Anna Fitzer’s research incorporates interests in fiction and drama of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Her work on the Sheridan family, and the poet and novelist Alicia LeFanu, draws upon a broader interest in women’s writing, and early Romantic literary biography and memoir.
A collaborative science and humanities approach to stories of place, and of coastal environments in particular, is informed by an interest in literature of the sea, sea travel and women under sail.
Ellen Jeffrey
CHOREOGRAPHER
Ellen Jeffrey is a neurodivergent independent dance artist and researcher working with time-specific choreographic practices. She studied at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and University of the Arts Helsinki before completing her PhD at Lancaster University.
Working collaboratively with local artists and communities to generate performances, films, workshops and writings, Ellen’s work explores the capacity of dance and movement to attune to more-than-human timescales.
Her work has been funded by the AHRC and Heritage Lottery Fund, amongst others, and supported by Cumbria Wildlife Trust, Lancashire Wildlife Trust, and Morecambe Bay Partnership.
Magnus Johnson
CO-INVESTIGATOR
Magnus Johnson is an environmental marine scientist with interests in crustaceans, fisheries science and management and statistical programming.
His academic work focuses on crustacean biology and ecology, sustainable fisheries, marine environmental management, and tropical marine systems.
He is a longstanding member of the Environmental Marine Ecology Research Group and has had many interdisciplinary research collaborations, including with Oxford University, the Natural History Museum, the British Antarctic Survey, the Holderness Fishing Industry Group, and the Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies.
Toby Horkan
PhD STUDENT
Toby Horkan is a PhD student in the School of Humanities at the University of Hull. He is currently researching the texts, stories, memories and emotions surrounding Spurn, in the South Holderness of East Yorkshire.
He is interested in how people represent their experiences with place and landscape in writing, and in particular how rapidly changing places such as Spurn are formed through the polyphonic interplay of countless human and non-human stories and narratives, as well as how different narratives for places may cause conflicts over how to manage their futures.
Mark Slater
COMPOSER
Mark Slater is a composer, producer and musicologist with an interest in the processes of how music is made, usually including uses of technology and improvisation in some way.
Whether working as a composer or producer, Mark’s work is fuelled by an exploration of place, spontaneity and collaboration – regardless of style.
His most recent work responds to both natural and human-made sites from the perspective of people’s interactions with environment, such as his current work on the South Holderness project, and his recent residency in Refshaleøen (Copenhagen) which led to the creation of a permanent site-specific geolocated audio artefact: Refshaleblomster.
View Mark’s website View Mark’s profile at the University of Hull