Doctoral Research

I am currently pursuing my doctorate at Teachers College, Columbia University, where my research explores transformative adult learning in dance education. Specifically, I am investigating how female-identifying, mid- to late-career dance educators experience multi-modal reflective practice and how these experiences shape their dance educator identities.

My dissertation, titled Teaching from the Heart, draws on the voices of ten participants from across the country. Through this study, I employ poetic inquiry and poetic portraiture as alternative methods of data analysis and interpretation.

Poetic inquiry expands the boundaries of traditional academic writing by embracing forms of meaning-making that are expressive, embodied, and emotionally resonant. Aligned with feminist methodologies that seek to recover marginalized voices, poetic inquiry offers a space where women can share their lived experiences in authentic and powerful ways.

Using this approach, I transform interviews, transcripts, observations, and reflective journals into poetry that honors the nuance and complexity of each participant’s story. The poems in my research are created using both "found poetry"—drawn directly from participants’ own words—and "generated poetry", interpreted and composed by me as the researcher. In this framework, poetic inquiry serves as both a method and a product, allowing participants’ voices to be both heard and deeply felt.

Please listen to the following two poems, created using poetic inquiry as part of my pilot study, Moving from the Center.