Rate My Professor Carol Brown

Professor Carol Brown is Professor of Choreography and Head of Dance at the Victorian College of the Arts in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne. A dancer, choreographer, and artist-scholar from Aotearoa New Zealand, her work has been presented globally with a renowned transdisciplinary reach. Trained in the Bodenwieser style by Shona Dunlop-MacTavish in Dunedin, she completed a history honours degree at the University of Otago, an MA in Dance Studies, and one of the first practice-led PhDs in Dance at the University of Surrey. Following her PhD solo The Mechanics of Fluids, she was appointed Choreographer in Residence at the Place Theatre London, founding Carol Brown Dances. Her choreographies have toured internationally at festivals including Roma Europa, Dance Umbrella, and Brighton Festival, and been commissioned by Scottish Dance Theatre, Verve, Subcircle, Group Motion, Touch Compass, STRUT, and DanceXchange. Previous academic appointments include lecturing positions at the University of Surrey and Brighton University, Reader in Dance at Roehampton University, and Associate Professor in Choreography at the University of Auckland, where she founded Choreographic Research Aotearoa. She joined the University of Melbourne in mid-2019.

Brown's research engages dance-architecture, digital dance, site dance, space, posthumanism, ecological change, and hidden histories through collaborations with artists, scientists, and technologists. She has written extensively about her practice in books and academic journals. Recent projects include Triptych (2023), Saltlines for Sealion Women (2025) commissioned by the Caroline Plummer Fellowship at the University of Otago, and Mental Dance (2022) with Emma Fisher, exploring neuroscience, interactive sound design, and concepts like the Bayesian Brain. Key publications include 'How to do a plié and not get bored' (2021, Choreographic Practices), 'Mental Dance' (NiTRO, 2021), 'Field Guide for Choreography as Research' (2019), and contributions such as 'Performing Empathy Machines' (2021) and 'Possibilising performance through interactive telematic technology: Mental Dance' (ISEA2022). Awards include the Jerwood Prize for Choreography, Ludwig Forum International Prize for Innovation, NESTA Dream Time fellowship, and Caroline Plummer Fellowship in Community Dance. At VCA Dance, she fosters creative research and builds international excellence in dance education and practice.