• Theatre

  • Rebecca Caines

  • Assistant Professor

Rebecca Caines profile image

BIOGRAPHY

Dr Rebecca Caines is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar, whose research crosses between creative technologies (including sound art, new media, and augmentation), and socially engaged art, with a special focus on improvisatory practices. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from the University of New South Wales, in Sydney, Australia; and completed two postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Guelph, before moving to University of Regina to help build a new cross faculty program in Creative Technologies. From 2013-201 she was also the director of the Regina Improvisation Studies Centre, a partnered research site and faculty-based research centre at the University of Regina. She also serves on the executive of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation, a long running, 2.5-million-dollar SSHRC Partnership.

Caines has completed large-scale community-based art and research projects in Australia, Northern Ireland, Canada, China, and the Netherlands. Her publications appear in journals such as Performance Research, Contemporary Music Review, The Canadian Journal of Action Research, Critical Studies in Improvisation, and M/C: Journal of Media and Culture. She also has chapters in several anthologies on performance, community-engagement, and improvisation, published by Duke, Routledge, and Bloomsbury. She is editor (with Ajay Heble) of Spontaneous Acts:  The Improvisation Studies Reader (Routledge, 2015).

Her recent projects include “ImprovEnabled”, a national art and research project with co-researchers and partners across Canada, Northern Ireland and Australia (see: http://improvenabled.ca/). This project investigates creative responses to social isolation and stigma surrounding people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, utilizing improvised digital art and strengths-based participatory research. In 2018, she completed a British Academy Visiting Research Fellowship at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, exploring socially responsive immersive audio technologies. She is currently leading the national art project “multiPLAY” focussed on new forms of digital community engagement with Canadian improvising artists (https://multiplay.ca/).  Caines’ work investigates the role of art and technology in social justice, contemporary understandings of community, and the fragile promise of ethical connection offered through dialogic approaches. Caines looks forward to helping to build the brand-new Creative Technologies program at York University’s Markham Campus, opening Fall 2023.

Theatre

People of AMPD

Sessional Assistant Professor

Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster

Assistant Professor

Jackie Chau

Administrative Staff

Julia Kenny

Administrative Staff

Divya Mehta

Assistant Professor

Danielle A.D. Howard

Assistant Professor

Rebecca Caines

Assistant Professor

Jamie Robinson

Administrative Staff

Mary Pecchia

Professor

Marlis Schweitzer

Technical Staff

Christina Cicko

Assistant Professor

Gavin McDonald

Assistant Professor

Aaron Kelly

Professor

Sarah Bay-Cheng

Contract Faculty

Allyson McMackon

Contract Faculty

David Smukler

Contract Faculty

Laurel Paetz

Contract Faculty

Aleksandar Lukac

Contract Faculty

Niki Landau

Contract Faculty

Michael Kelly

Contract Faculty

Jennifer Triemstra-Johnston

Contract Faculty

Laura Jayne Nelles

Contract Faculty

Lisa Magill

Contract Faculty

Jareth Li

Associate Professor

Sylvia Defend

Contract Faculty

Michael Cuttini

Contract Faculty

David Rayfield

Contract Faculty

Steve Ross

Associate Professor

Ian Garrett

Associate Professor

Gwenyth Dobie

Associate Professor

Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston

Professor Emeritus

Paula Thomson

Professor Emeritus

Anthony Stephenson

Professor Emeritus

Ron Singer

Professor Emeritus

David Rotenberg

Professor Emeritus

Jeff Henry

Professor Emeritus

Robert Fothergill

Professor Emeritus

Jill Courtney

Professor Emeritus

Douglas Buck

Professor Emeritus

Keith Bradley

Professor Emeritus

David Bentley Boice

Associate Professor

Belarie Hyman Zatzman

Associate Professor

Mark Wilson

Professor Emeritus

Ross Stuart

Professor Emeritus

Phillip Silver

Professor Emerita

Judith Rudakoff

Professor Emeritus

Donald Rubin

Professor

Teresa Przybylski

Professor

Peter McKinnon

Associate Professor

James McKernan

Associate Professor

John Mayberry

Associate Professor

Laura Levin

Professor Emeritus

Paul Lampert

Associate Professor

Shawn Kerwin

Associate Professor

Alberto Guevara

Associate Professor

Michael Greyeyes

Associate Professor

Ines Buchli

Associate Professor

Erika Batdorf

Professor Emerita

Elizabeth Asselstine

Associate Professor

Eric Armstrong