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 has developed a long-term dialogue with new technologies. She was originally trained as a dancer and dance teacher in her native country Greece. During the 1980s, she danced with Greek Choreodrama and Dance Theatre Nafsika, before moving to Britain to study for an MA in Dance Studies and a practice-based PhD in dance improvisation (University of Surrey, 1996). Between 1996 and 2001, she directed dance company kunstwerk-blend, which was funded by the Arts Council England and performed in Britain, USA and Europe, alongside working as Senior Lecturer in Dance at Nottingham Trent University.

Between 2000 and 2003, she was an AHRB Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at Nottingham Trent University and in 2003, she became Reader in Interdisciplinary Choreography. Between 2007 and 2011, and prior to the merger between Edinburgh College of Art (eca) and the University of Edinburgh in Agust 2011, she was Director of the Graduate Research School at the Edinburgh College of Art, focusing on the integration between theoretical and studio-based approaches to research, and the development of innovative models of doctoral provision, informed by both academic and professional research practices in the Arts (including Music and the Performing Arts), Design and Architecture/Landscape Architecture. Sophia has contributed to work undertaken in this field by national bodies such as the UK Council for Graduate Education (for details see Practice-Led Doctorates in the Arts, Design and Architecture in UKCGE's 2011 Report on Professional Doctorates in the UK), has supervised to completion ten doctoral students in a variety of areas across the Creative and Performing Arts, as well as examined externally an equivalent number of PhD candidates in similar areas.

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.During this period, she started experimenting with the use of choreographic methods in a variery of new media and formats, and introduced the terms  choreographic environments' and 'interdisciplinary choreography' (see her chapter in Contemporary Choreography: A Critical Reader).

Keywords: Dance, Choreography, Movement, Body, Space, Urban Environment, Performance, Composition, Improvisation, Site-specific, Interactive technologies, Interdisciplinarity, Research Methods, Practice as Research.

Sophia's most recent research interests expand across two areas: the use of new technologies in interdisciplinary choreographic projects (see projects Haptic Experiments and Emergent Objects - Snake) and the role of choreographic approaches in interdisciplinary projects which address movement in the social and public space in relation to issues of architecture, urban planning and social exclusion (see project Choreography of Social Movement and City Glimspes).

Joint Action Research group, University of Edinburgh

Disability Studies Research Group, University of Edinburgh

Arts and Dementia Research Group, University of Edinburgh

"Reality Check": perception in the arts Research Group, University of Edinburgh

FUSION art and neuroscience, University of Edinburgh

FemTechNet network

SenseLab, Concordia University

Main supervision areas

choreography, dance, movement, performance, interdisciplinarity, improvisation, composition, practice as research, site-specific work, body and space, movement and space, body/movement/space and interactive technologies, movement and/in urban environment

Current Students

PhD

Susanne Fallouh (Design/ Interior Design and Textiles), 1st Supervisor

Eleni-Ira Panourgia (Art/ Sculpture and Sound), 1st Supervisor

Styliani Mygdali (Architecture) 2nd Supervisor

Ines Coelho (Choreography) - Glasgow School of Art, 1nd Supervisor

Lisa Naas (Design - Glass), 1st Supervisor 

Felix Green (Architecture), 2nd Supervisor

Farah Saleh (Choreography), 1st Supervisor

Nicky Haire (Music), 3rd Supervisor

Advisor for: Gregor McAlpine (Printmaking)

MPhil

Seungyun Ruy (Art), 1st Supervisor

Hazel Holloway (Art), 1st Supervisor

PhD Completions

Edinburgh College of Art (2007-2015)

Michael Klien (Choreography)

Lisa Watts (Performance)

Jenny Triggs (Illustration)

Sue Hawksley (Choreography)

Beatriz Cantinho (Choreography)

Jessica Harrison (Sculpture)

Esra Oskay (Art/Drawing and Painting)

Lyndsay Mann (Art/Moving Image)

Andrew Sneddon (Art)

Nottingham Trent University (2000-2007)

Sharon Smith (Choreography)

Fiona Wright (Choreography)

Jonathan Willett (Fine Art)

Mirja Koponen (Fine Art)

MPhil Completions

Edinburgh College of Art (2007-2015)

Gerard Jefferson Lewis (Photography)

Kenneth Chau (Photography)

- Contributions to several postgraduate programmes, including MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Practice (ECA), MSc in Cultural Studies (ECA), MSc in Dance Science and Education (Moray House), MSc Design and Digital Media and MSc Sound Design (ECA), and MSc Cultural Landscapes.

-Contributions to postgraduate courses such as Research Methods in Art and Visual Culture

- Contributions to undergraduate courses such as Artistic Research: Themes and Methods, Contemporary Artistic Research, Materials and Techniques: Art History as Artistic Production, Reality Check, Visual Culture Research Project, Presentations Methods & Context 3 and 4.

- Coordinator and content provider of the undergraduate couse Body As Artistic Material

- Coordinator and content provider of all core courses of the MSc by Research Interdisciplinary Creative Practices

Programme Director - MSc by Research Interdisciplinary Creative Practices