Dr Mark Edward is a pracademic and a category dodger. His performance work in live art, contemporary dance performance and choreography are related to wider themes within social sciences. Mark has featured in Attitude magazine and on several BBC radio and TV documentaries, focusing on drag histories and activism. He has also featured in The History of Drag documentary, alongside Boy George and Ginny Lemon, airing on Gaydio. In 2022 Mark’s research into drag cultures provided the content for the three-part BBC Drag Herstory series. He is the author of the book Mesearch and the Performing Body (Palgrave, 2018), and co-editor of the books Contemporary Drag Practices and Performers: Drag in a Changing Scene vol 1 and Drag Histories, Herstories and Hairstories; Drag in a Changing Scene vol 2 (Bloomsbury, 2020, 2021). Mark’s research areas include gender, sexuality, activism, ageing and wellbeing in performance. Professionally, he has worked for Rambert Dance, Senza Tempo Dance Theatre, with the American performance artist and activist Penny Arcade in her seminal work Bad Reputation and with the Australian performance activist Jeremy Goldstein in his Truth to Power Cafe. In addition to academic publications with Oxford University Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Sage, Springer, Intellect and Emerald, Mark has also published in non-academic forms, with Animated and Supernova Books. At the core of his investigations is the idea of self in research, or, as Mark puts it, ‘mesearch’. Performance based work and public outputs have included Council House Movie Star, featuring the drag queen Gale Force, which headlined the opening of Homotopia in 2012 and the photographic exhibition Dying Swans and Dragged Up Dames in 2013. With a commitment to inclusivity and equality in performing arts, Mark has also researched extensively on boys and men in dance and ageing in dance. In 2014 he was invited to the Elixir ‘Art of Age’ conference at Sadler’s Wells as a keynote speaker. He has written on mental illness and wellbeing in dance, risky ethics, sex and performance, countercultural dance in the UK, risky ethics and autobiographical performance making and has recently co-authored (with Dr Chris Greenough, author of Undoing Theology: Life Stories from Non-normative Christians) a chapter on queer literacy and doing ethical research with LGBT+ people. Mark is regularly invited overseas to deliver his research into ageing dancers and drag queens and ‘choreophobia’ in men and boys who dance. Mark also performs at various arts events. Mark is currently working on three drag book projects. One for the Routeledge Basics series, a second one for The Routeledge Companion to Drag and a third for the drag in a changing scene series for Bloomsbury. He has also been invited to be guest editor in 2024-2025 for Intellect's Choreographic Practices journal. External Consultation Mark is an expert reader in the areas of drag, dance, gender and performance for the publishers Palgrave, Emerald and Routledge. He has been an external reviewer for MA and BA degree revalidations and the External Examiner for the MA/MFA Creative Practices (Transdisciplinary and Professional Dance Practice) for Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance.