Ms Jaroslava Tomanova

I am a Czech citizen educated in Prague, Leeds and London. I have work experience in performing arts in the Czech Republic where I’ve been involved in theatre and festival production management on various free-lance based projects since 2009. Since 2014 I have worked for Tanec Praha, a leading contemporary dance venue in Prague and was in charge of coordinating and implementing audience engagement activities within BeSpectACTive!, an EU funded large scale cooperation project.

My PhD at the University of Leeds is an explanatory study of cultural policy in the Czech Republic supervised by Dr Leila Jancovich and Prof Kate Oakley. In my research, I am taking interpretative approach and focus at subjective experiences of individuals.

Outside my PhD, I am interested in critical debates on participatory audience engagement in the arts, critical theory, cultural studies and post-modern sociology. Recently, I have been growing my interest in reflexive research methodologies, debates on qualitative research methods and qualitative data analysis.