In 2026, ITI facilitates research initiatives by hosting two distinguished scholars, Dr. Giorgia Ciampi and Assoc. Prof. Maiya Murphy, who will engage with the international student body, faculty and alumni of ITI to advance their respective research projects into the gender and cognitive dimensions of performance and training. By enabling access to its unique training environment for these inquiries, ITI further develops the critical understanding of its intercultural pedagogy and contributes new insights to the global field of arts education and theatre-making.
Dr. Giorgia Ciampi
Practice as Research Resident, ITI
Dr. Giorgia Ciampi Tsolaki is a freelance theatre maker and researcher, based in the UK with long-term experience of studying/working in Singapore and France. She is active as a performer and workshop leader both internationally and in the Southwest of the UK, where she recently toured her new piece – The Spiral. She is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Exeter where she holds a post-doc (2023) and PhD in Drama and Philosophy (2022), and where she obtained her MA in directing and actor training with Phillip Zarrilli. She is also co-founder, facilitator and international relations mediator of the Intercultural Presence Arts Company (France, 2018-) and actor of Compagnie Canopée (Paris, 2015-). Her training at the Intercultural Theatre Institute in Singapore (2012–2014) has shaped both her later practice and research into intercultural affectivity. She has recently been appointed Lead for international collaboration for the InITIate alumni committee (ITI).
For her Practice-as-Research residency at ITI, she is investigating the embodiment of gender diverse characters in Kutiyattam through training alongside first- and second-year students with Kapila Venu, Renjith Chakyar and Rajeev Kalamandalam. The title of her project is: (En-)gendering affectivities in contemporary Kutiyattam pedagogy. She is also exploring with third-year students the development of an intercultural actor training and devising practice based on overlapping and complementary principles from Taiji, Kutiyattam and Noh.
Assoc. Prof. Maiya Murphy
Visiting Researcher, ITI
Maiya Murphy is a practitioner-researcher working at the confluence of performer training, movement, devising, and cognitive approaches to understanding theatre. She is the author of Practice, Research, and Cognition in Devised Performance (Bloomsbury Methuen 2025) and Enacting Lecoq: Movement in Theatre, Cognition, and Life (Palgrave Macmillan 2019). She is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore, Director of the International Network of Cognition, Theatre, and Performance, and a cofounder of Autopoetics, a theatre collective.
