Disrupting Digital Girlhood: exploring the performativity of female identity in digital space through autobiographical performance as a socially engag

This practice research project explores how adolescent girls perform their identities in digital spaces. Through an exploration of autobiographical approaches to art and performance making, the research aims to find new modes of self-representation online, disrupting hegemonic, neoliberal notions of girlhood. Developed in collaboration with Little Fish Theatre, an arts organization working with underserved young people, this research positions "participants" as co-researchers and adopts an applied theatre approach to storytelling, life writing and community building. I consider digital identity through a Glitch Feminist lens (Russell 2020) and adopt Fournier's autotheory (Fournier 2021) as an approach to understanding new knowledge that emerges from the practice.

The project has two central interconnecting aims: Firstly, to interrogate how adolescent girls inhabit and narrate themselves in performative digital spaces. Secondly, to understand how forms of socially engaged and applied performance can disrupt, interrogate, and critically re-evaluate digital performance of self, enabling adolescent girls to re-position themselves as empowered, critical digital content creators and consumers.