My identity is shaped through travels and translations. Just as I came to dance through visual arts, I traveled geographically too. Before coming to London and Roehampton, I lived, studied and worked in several countries. I completed BA in Fine Arts (combining practice and theory of painting, print-making and sculpture) in Serbia, Belgrade, University of Fine Arts. Belgrade is also my city, where I was born and where I spent my formative years. I completed an MA in Dance Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada -- my adopted city and country, in which I lived for over a decade, before coming to London to work on my doctoral research at Dance Department here at University of Roehampton. Now I am a Londoner. My perspective thus combines kinds of trans-cultural and cross-disciplinary experiences, upon which I also draw in my teaching.

I joined the Department as a full-time Lecturer upon completion of my PhD studies at Roehampton. Studying here was a great experience, and discovering the teaching simultaneosly, during that process, alowed for important insights into different possibilities for observing and thinking about dances. As I come to dance studies from visual art, my understanding of world around me through observation proved to be a stimulating aspect in both practices. In dance research and teaching I try to explore what can be learnt about dancing through our visuality, in addition to exploring movement through other parts of my body.

PhD, MA Dance, BA Fine Arts, FHEA.

In dance research I aim to bridge the experiences of the dancer and the spectator. I explore corelations between the performer's ideas about their performances, and the ways in which such conceptualisations might affect what the viewer sees in the dance. My methodology often involves dialogues with professional dancers, which in turn inform my writing and research. I also organise public events with dancers as collaborators ( The Forsythe Company at Work, June 2013, at University of Roehampton and Sadler's Wells; Dana Caspersen's workshops Violence:Recode at University of Roehampton (May 2015) and UNDER | STAND: Action Dialogues on Race (Feb 2019, supported by TECHNĒ).

My research projects often centre on dance and visual arts, or visual culture concepts, such as self/portraiture in art videos and dance performance; aesthetic of practice clothes/leotard ballet costumes and impact on dancers' performances; collaborations between fashion designers and choreographers (William Forsythe and Issey Miyake). My recent publications are on post-dramatic theatre performance (Forsythe work) as a case of theatre-based FOMO, or 'the fear of missing out';  modes of visual abstraction in 20th century ballet (Balanchine), and whiteness. My upcoming research is on disco as an open image, 'bedroom discos' and hanging out, as well as Gen-Z mixed-reality vernacular concepts that trace embodied experience in digital video-based dance and fine arts. 

I teach and contribute to a number of contextual modules on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Those include BA Thinking Through Dance, Dance Analysis and Philosophy, Dance, Screendance, and BA Dissertation; MA/MFA/MRes Ways of Knowing, and Mediated Choreography.

Currently I co-supervise five PhD projects, on topics of:

• dance spectatorship/spectator's experience of the dance work;

• dance and visual culture concepts (fashion design and costumes);

• the process of dancing in the studio, as a practice of togetherness;

• the dancer's agency;

and dancer's experience of senses in the ballet class;

I invite proposals for PhD projects on dance and visual arts and visual culture (including fine arts and popular media, such as fashion, cinematography, digital/social media photographic works, and social media as a space of performance); dance performance and spectatorship, and the relationships between the performer and spectato;  dance and visual representation and diversity; digitality, dance and media, and particularly dance on video, and in digital and mixed reality spaces. 

Instagram: @yugo.tamara

https://roehampton.academia.edu/TamaraTomicVajagic

Dance Studies Association,

Performance Studies International PSi,

TaPRA (Performance and New Technologies Working Group)

Antiracm at Work-- Dance, Theatre and Performance collective: https://antiracismatwork.wixsite.com/about

Editorial board member (Reviews Editor) International Journal of Screendance, 2017-2019

Adjunct curator Sans Souci Screendance Festival 2018-2019

Advisory work for Swiss National Science Foundation

Peer review work for scholarly publications (including Dance Research Journal , Critical Journal in Men's Fashion)