Gabriel Baker

Contact

Qualifications

Bachelor of Media and Creative Technology, major in Creative Practice, University of Waikato (2015)

Master of Media and Creative Technology, major in Creative Practice (first class honours), University of Waikato (2017)

PhD Candidate in Human Geography

Research Interests

My research interests sit at the intersections of identity-place relationships, feminisms, dance, and creative and embodied approaches to research.

PhD thesis

Title

A place with many lovers: Danced movement as geographic investigation into some Pākehā women’s imaginaries of place.

Supervisors

- Prof Sara Kindon

- Dr Emily Beausoleil

Project objectives and description

Emerging scholarship within human geography and allied disciplines suggests that research approaches which engage with bodily movement, and the tacit memories and knowledges it holds, offer particular promise as an aide to acknowledging and interrogating the dynamics of identity-place relationships. Such a claim lies at the heart of my doctoral project, which drawing on my background as a contemporary dancer and subjectivity as a Pākehā woman, uses danced movement as methodology, to investigate imaginaries of place held by some Pākehā or white women of settler coloniser descent in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. The project seeks to inquire into the ability of danced movement to access subconscious knowledges of place, and to question dominant settler coloniser narratives, which are distinctly androcentric, through attending to the embodied knowledges of women of settler coloniser descent

Publications

Baker, G., Kindon, S., & Beausoleil, E. (2022). Danced movement in human geographic research: A methodological discussion. Geography Compass, 16(8), e12653. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12653

Baker, G. (2020). Of Daughter’s, Dreaming and Dust: Reflections on ecofeminism and contemporary dance making. Dance Research Aotearoa, 6, 95-110. https://www.dra.ac.nz/DRA/article/view/87