Research output per year
Research output per year
Accepting PhD Students
PhD projects
Currently supervising:
Dane Eissler's "(Re)Play: Rediscovering Wonder, Subversion, and Authenticity in Theater-Making Practices" via the Trans Art Institute for Creative Research and Liverpool John Moores University alongside Prof Simon Piasecki and Dr Michael Bowdidge.
Dr T. J. Bacon is accepting PhD projects via GSMD. Email for an informal discussion of your application.
Research activity per year
Publishing under the name T. J. Bacon (she/they) and creating artwork using the moniker tjb, Dr Tōmei June Bacon is a trans-femme pansexual person with hidden disabilities. She is a leading voice in the study of performance art and visual art through the application of phenomenology and has two major book titles in the field to date:
An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Performance Art: SELF/s (Intellect, Chicago University Press 2022/24)
The Phenomenology of Blood in Performance Art (Routledge 2025)
Her practice as an artist-philosopher foregrounds transgender studies and phenomenology, alongside queer theory, crip theory, disaster studies, and futures to consider visual art, performance art, activism and curation.
Her research and practice as research extend across interdisciplinary fields and socially engaged transdisciplinary practice. She was researcher on the major EU Commission and UNESCO project Futures 2020-2023 and co authored two handbooks as well as developed the methodology Performance for Futures with her colleague Pedro De Senna. With a strong commitment to the principals of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in her methods she joined GSMD with her project Queer Acts of Hope as part of the De-Centre for Socially Engaged Practice & Research.
Recently completing work on the text ‘Hidden Disability: A Queer Phenomenology of Disorientation’ which features in Ladron De Guevara, Mock and Young’s forthcoming The Routledge Companion to Bodies in Performance (Routledge). Other notable texts with a focus on queer diversity and inclusion include:
‘The Argument for Queering ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ (2022)
‘Blood Rituals - A Provocation to Queer a Phenomenological Soil’ (2025)
‘The fluidity or transmutability of borders held in the lived body of trans and non-binary bodies’ (2025)
Most recently she founded the Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence, a global network of interdisciplinary scholars with the collective intention to produce new knowledge; lead on initiatives toward public engagement and impact advocacy; and producing critical mass that benefits Trans+ lives. The TVCE was founded with the intention to exist beyond the geographic boundaries of a single institution and/or country as an act of preservation and safety during a time of unstable global political turmoil that directly targets Trans+ lives and intersectional marginalised groups. Its "virtualness" creates a safe queer space for Trans+ people irrespective of political upheaval and oppression. The TVCE hosts an annual symposium and welcomes new members.
She is also an external examiner with UAL and sits on the ethics review board at GSMD.
T. J. Bacon is currently working on her third book which expands her research through phenomenology and trans+ lives, art, and activism.
T. J. Bacon (she/they) was born in 1980 and has exhibited artwork internationally for over 20+ years under the moniker, tjb. From 2001 to 2008, this work spanned writing, theatre direction, public interventions, club performances, live art, cabaret, and visual art.
From 2009, refining her craft through experimentation she began focusing on solo practices in noise and performance art, exploring phenomenological perception, researching and establishing the notion of a multiplicity of self/s, while her curatorial, directorial, and producing work delved into themes of risk and failure.
In 2012, she founded Tempting Failure, an international performance art festival that has supported over 800 artists to date. By 2017, her solo practice started to align with her emerging understanding of her gender identity, sexuality, and disabilities. This began by unpacking indoctrination from growing up under the UK’s oppressive Section 28 law, which had erased queer representation in her education, deeply impacted her formative years, delaying her self-acceptance and exploration until much later in life.
From 2017 to 2019, her solo work helped her navigate, express, and reclaim her identity, embracing a queer phenomenological approach to her perception.
Between 2020 and 2023 her live practice transitioned to include painting and sculpture, alongside ongoing academic and multimodal writing. During this period, she became more comfortable with her authentic sense of being a trans-femme person, appreciating her pansexuality and acknowledging her disabilities.
From 2024, she has returned to the elemental materiality that has been consistent throughout her practice to commence a new exploratory phase drawing upon an avocational interest in queered applications of esoterica. Here, a protective invocation for the trans+ lived experience emerges to queer the linear perception of time and challenge seemingly immovable oppressions faced by herself and her community. Her current artistic practice is therefore an act of resistance where hope is held in the queered esoteric: change is real, but time is not. Time is only a reflection of the seasons of change.
Research output: Book › Chapter in Book › peer-review
Research output: Book › Chapter in Book
Research output: Book › Chapter in Book › peer-review
Research output: Book › Chapter in Book › peer-review
Research output: Book › Chapter in Book › peer-review