Research Interests
My research investigates enactive approaches to cognition through dance; dance as a situated way of knowing; research methods in which movement functions as a mode of inquiry and knowledge production; and pedagogies grounded in embodied, collaborative, and critically reflective practice.. By studying dance across social, relational, and ecological dimensions, I examine cognition as movement itself. My work also focuses on the lived, experiential reality of collective movement—how we navigate our environments, embody our cultural contexts, and transform the spaces we inhabit.
Publications
“Aesthetic Decision-Making: An Enactive Approach to the Creative Process.”
Journal of Aesthetic Education, forthcoming 2026.
“Let’s go across the floor: Affective practice at the Sweat Spot.”
Research in Dance Education, 2025.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2025.2570121
“Staging Affectivity Through Expressive Dance Movement: The 60+ Community Dance Program at Copenhagen’s Dansekapellet.”
Journal of Dance Education, Special Edition on Dance and 4E Cognition, 2021
https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2021.1939356
“Kinesthesia and Cultural Affordances: Learning Physical and General Kinetic Concepts in a Tertiary-Level Contemporary Dance Classroom”
International Journal of Education & the Arts, 2024
Matthew Henley and Robin Conrad
http://doi.org/10.26209/ijea25n5
“‘I’m not thinking about it to understand it, I’m thinking about it to do it’: Students' Sensemaking Experiences from the Modern Dance Classroom.”
Journal of Dance Education, 2021
Matthew Henley and Robin Conrad