MY RESEARCH PRACTICE is grounded in ecological thinking around transdisciplinary approaches to body-place relationships, and I regard choreographic practice per se as a social tool, informed by studies in posthumanism, geopolitics and art activism. My research was initially framed through an AHRC awarded practice-based PhD (2010), locating Butoh and Body Weather training praxis in relation to inter-sense relationships in site-based choreographic composition.  

As an eco-somatic dance artist and environmental educator, whose work intersects with land-based studies, environmental philosophy and climate activism, my work in rural communities concerned with environmental impacts is always evolved through the use of creative embodied facilitation, as a means to create stimulating starting points for translocal conversation around contested landscapes. In the past, this has led to entangled debates around resource management, but has also unearthed unacknowledged and/or difficult relationships between people, animal, plant and place. Much of my early research was evolved in close collaboration with Australian Body Weather dance artist Marnie Orr, through our dance ecology collective Orr and Sweeney (2007-2013). Since 2021 I have collaborated with Irish dance artist Maria Kerin under the umbrella title The Floating Village, engaging with diversity in the landscape through time-based movement practices in order to build communities of knowledge in a slow but urgent devotion to radical change.  
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My research actively seeks out progressive and fluid transdisciplinary research practices across institutions and scholarly disciplines/ past posts include a Visiting Fellow for the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University in response to their research theme of ‘Ecological Enlightenment’ (2012) and Centre Fellow for the Centre for Sustainable Futures, University of Plymouth (2007-08), designing inter-departmental sustainability initiatives within curriculum, campus and local community. Further artistic research has received support from international bodies such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, Creative Ireland, and London Arts Board.