Dance matters collective – Research – Department of Teacher Education
Dance Matters Collective
The Dance Matters Collective is an African–Nordic research collective exploring dance as radical care in teacher education, schools, and communities. We investigate how dance and dance education can foster inclusion, belonging, wellbeing, cultural resilience, social justice, and educational transformation.
The collective has emerged from more than a decade of collaboration in dance pedagogy, expanded choreography, and inclusive, participatory and decolonial methodologies. Our work is grounded in Global South–Global North partnerships and draws together diverse cultural, educational, and artistic traditions and knowledges as resources for radically rethinking teaching, learning, care, and artistic and knowledge production in dance.
The collective includes scholars, teacher educators, artists, and practitioners from the Department of Teacher Education at NTNU (Norway), the Faculty of Education at Nelson Mandela University (South Africa), the Department of Film and Performing Arts at Makerere University (Uganda), the Faculty of Performing Arts at University of Stavanger (Norway), the Department of Dance and Dance Pedagogy at Stockholm University of the Arts (Sweden), as well as partners from the professional dance field including DansiT Choreographic Center (Trondheim) and SANS – Senter for dansepraksis (Oslo).
Through research, teaching, artistic practice, and international collaboration, we seek to expand access to meaningful dance education and strengthen dance as a practice of radical care across diverse educational and cultural contexts.
Projects in Dance Matters Collective
Co-leader
Co-leader
Bio Ronald Kibirige
Bio Ronald Kibirige
Ronald Kibirige (PhD) is a music and dance educator, researcher, practitioner, and music craftsman. He is an Associate Professor of Arts Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) with focus on dance, music and dance-music. His research interests are in exploring interdisciplinary formal and non-formal pedagogical approaches for music, dance, and dance-music arts education. He approaches the interconnected disciplines of dance and music as interactive knowledge-bodies, and therefore views dancing, musicking, and dance-musicking as social-artistic and socially-situated community cultural-specific processes of knowing and doing.
Co-leader
Bio Marelize van Heerden
Bio Marelize van Heerden
Dr Marelize van Heerden lectures Philosophy of Education, Dance education and Music education at the Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela University. She holds a master’s degree in music and a doctorate in education. Her doctorate regarded the potential of dance education to promote social cohesion in South Africa. She also studied Cultural Sociology at Masaryk University, Czech Republic during a European Union Erasmus mobility programme.
She is passionate about preparing teachers to teach creative dance-making for child development. Her research engages with decolonising dance education (van Heerden 2022; 2025); and the value of dance-making for improving mental health (van Heerden 2024; 2025). Besides her involvement in dance education, she is also interested in general teacher education, more specifically training teachers to teach in multicultural contexts, and how to create experiences of dignity for the Other (van Heerden 2024).
Marelize won both Teacher of the Year and Emerging Researcher of the Year Awards at the Faculty of Education, Nelson Mandela University. She was the Acting Head of Department for Secondary School Education at Nelson Mandela University.
Marelize presented guest lectures at University of Copenhagen (Denmark), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway), Carl von Ossietsky University of Oldenburg (Germany), Bielefeld University (Germany), Mindanao State University General Santos (Philippines) and Universidad dal Valle (Colombia). In 2021, she was a keynote speaker at a UNESCO Arts education conference (2021), where she challenged arts educators to interrogate their own teaching praxis to identify hegemonic terminology when categorising diverse genres in their classrooms.
Marelize was also the official choreographer of the internationally acclaimed Nelson Mandela University Choir (2005-2017), who won the traditional section of a World Choir competition in Austria with her choreography.
Currently, Marelize is the external diversity and inclusion officer of the NEOLAIA Alliance, a consortium of 9 European universities. Her role is to lead a small team to monitor the implementation of a joint Diversity and Inclusion Charter at all 9 universities.
Co-leader
Alfdaniels Mabingo
Alfdaniels Mabingo
Alfdaniels Mabingo, Ph. D, is a dance scholar, researcher, and performer from Uganda. He is currently a Senior Lecturer and Interim Chair, Department of Performing Arts and Film, Makerere University. A former Fulbright Scholar at New York University and African Futures Fellow at Michigan State University, Mabingo’s artistic inquiries and research traverse pedagogies of African dances, decolonial dance research, dance and urban cultures, and creative arts economies in African contexts. Mabingo holds a doctorate in Dance Studies from the University of Auckland, an M.A. in Dance Education from NYU, a Master’s of Art in Performing Arts from Makerere University, and MBA from Eastern and Southern Africa Management Institute (ESAMI). He has collaborated globally on performances, pedagogical practices, research, and community-oriented projects worldwide. He is the author of the book on Ubuntu as Dance Pedagogy in Uganda.
Members of research group
Bio Camilla Reppen
Bio Camilla Reppen
Camilla Reppen is Assistant Lecturer in Dance Pedagogy, Head of Program for the Master's programme Dance Education at Stockholm University of the Arts, and freelance choreographer/project leader/dancer. She holds an MA in Educational Management and works to complete an independent PhD (Dr Philos), centering on change in higher dance education. As artist/researcher/teacher, she shows particular interest in choreography as an approach to learning and decentralized perspectives on leadership practice in artistic processes.
- Mari Flønes
- Anette Sture Iversen