Rae Matthews

Research Interests/Topics: Performance Studies; Political Theory, Resistance, and Social Movements; Women’s Healthcare; Imagination; Irish Studies

Minor Area: Health Behavior/Health Promotion

Arts Background: : I am a theatre director by trade. I have over 20 years of experience working in the theatre in all aspects of production and administration, from grassroots to professional.

Awards: AIAR Summer Research Travel Grant for preliminary research in Ireland, Summer of 2023. 

"My current research interests explore the performativity of contentious politics around women’s healthcare. I use performance studies as a theoretical lens, embodied form of research, and information dissemination practice in order to engage with the efficacy and receptivity of activist movements concerning women’s health and wellbeing in the United States and Ireland. My aim is to get at the heart of how imagination drives change and influences healthcare policy by using ethnographic methods to gather narratives of experience and imagined futures from feminist activists and then by exploring and presenting those narratives through embodied theatrical practices."