Research Profile: Andrew Lee

PhD Candidate
University of Chichester, Department of Theatre
BA (Hons), MA

Email: A.Lee@chi.ac.uk
Twitter: @ArtMagicDruid
Dwina Gibb Award Winner for Postgraduate Research

I am fascinated by the relationship between the audience/performer and its manipulation. My current research is exploring the connection between propaganda, therapy, magic, druidic spirituality, and performance on effecting audience/performer consciousness. The resulting process, called art/magic, has been developed as a mode to engage with the climate emergency.

Previously, I have engaged with game theory as a mode of creating interactive performances involving the audience in choice-based mechanics; accessibility in Brechtian research presentation; and sound and digital media in developing autotetro performance.

Research Mission:

As a Nurodiverse academic I have always been aware that my journey through academia would be difficult, as the Calvin and Hobbes strip suggests academic writing often ‘inhibits clarity’. It is my aim to be able to explain the complexities of my research interests to anyone with a passing interest in them, not for those with specialised knowledge.

In David L. Goodstein’s book Feynman's Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun 1996), Goodstein recounts an anecdote in which he asked the theoretical physicist Richard Feynman to explain ‘why spin one-half particles obey Fermi-Dirac statistics’, known for his ability to ‘devise ways to explain even the most profound ideas to beginning students’ Feynman replied “I’ll prepare a freshman lecture on it”. Returning a few days later he announced “I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the freshman level. That means we don't really understand it.”

If I am not able to explain a subject to an undergraduate class, then I simply don’t understand it.