The Research Institute for Media, Art and Performance has received funding from external funding bodies for a number of significant research projects. Researchers have also received internal funding (schemes that are particularly focused at supporting early career researchers).

Present and past research projects include:

• Towards Brown Gold
  
  
• Establishing Collaborative Space between Local Communities and Parish Councils for Effective Recovery after Hurricanes in Jamaica
  
  
• The Bedfordshire Choreographic Development Project (Dance Beds)
  
  
• The Black Dance Archives project (UK) - evaluation led by Dr Jane Carr and Christina Schwabenland. The Project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund; it was set up in partnership with a range of organisations including Black Cultural Archives, National Resource Centre for Dance, University of Leeds and Birmingham Records, and led by the State of Trust. The project identified the contribution and impact that British 'Black' dance has made to the cultural heritage of the UK and how this was not acknowledged and was in danger of being lost and forgotten.
  
  
• Creating a post-conflict research network in Africa - led by Professor Jon Silverman and funded by the British Academy under the International Partnership Programme and the International Partnership & Mobility Scheme to develop inter-disciplinary collaborations with academics in sub-Saharan Africa and build a post-conflict research network.
  
  
• 'Cross-media co-operation in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s'
  
  
• East Youth Dance Development - a partnership between the University of Bedfordshire and DanceEast
  
  
• Evaluating Stopgap Dance Company's IRIS programme
  
  
• Generations Dancing - an intergenerational arts and health project
  
  
• Hear & Now: The impact of a holistic Arts and Heath project on participant wellbeing - led by Dr Rachel Farrer and Dr Imogen Aujla and organised by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Orchestras Live.
  
  
• Horror and Romance in the technologizing of the body: Lon Chaney and Elinor Glyn ‘suffering for their art’ in five films of 1920s - a project funded by the British Academy and led by Professor Alexis Weedon (2020-22). This project demonstrated changes in attitude to the technologizing of the body through the creative work of two innovators of popular fiction who applied their embodied knowledge to enlarge their audience’s emotional and intellectual understanding of the treatment of deformity and disability.
  
  
• Independent Dancers: Roles, motivation and success
  
  
• Neria film, a British Academy funded research project (2017-19) led by Dr Agnieszka Piotrowska; it aimed to uncover new aspects to the iconic Neria (1993) movie. Read more about the Neria film project
  
  
• 'Ontological Narratives' - a practice-led project.
  
  
• The Possibilities of Different Geographies (2019, Safehouse 1 Peckham) - led by Dr Jane Carr and the artist Bruce Sharp, was an interactive workshop/ performance installation which aimed to facilitate short explorations of embodied identities. The project considered that posture, gesture and action can be thought of as providing tools to explore issues of identity, gender and sexualities as (re)presented to others through the performative actions of the subject. The work also aimed to provide tools for reflecting upon coded movement behaviour and to surface the human capacity to switch fluidly between them by using written prompts/guide/instructions - a kind of ‘dish’ – as guide for such ‘improvisations’
  
  
• 'Relocating Choreographic Process: The impact of grid technologies and collaborative memory on practice-led research in dance'
  
  
• The Role and Impact of Freelancers in the UK Dance Sector
  
  
• TestBeds project funded by Arts Council England to support artists and cultural organisations to develop the skills to thrive economically, creatively and socially within Luton. Research outcomes included Developing a Sense of Place (UCL Press 2020) which published research-led analysis of the role of the artist /practitioner in communities with contested or divided identities.
  
  
• Translating the ISTD Syllabi for Young Dancers with Disabilities