Emily Orley

Key details:

Department:
Production Arts
Role:
Programme Leader, MA Collaborative Performance Making
Contact details:
Emily.orley@gsmd.ac.uk
Emily Orley, Production Arts staff at Guildhall School

Biography & Pure profile

Areas of expertise 

Scenography, installation and live art, creative-critical writing, site-writing, practice-as-research, heritage and place.

 

Profile 

Emily Orley (PhD, PGCHE) is a London-based artist, researcher and educator, whose work includes performance, scenography, installation, video and hybrid modes of writing. She is interested in exploring ideas to do with memory, maintenance and enchantment, as well as the un-fixing of time, heritage and place. Always open to new forms of experimentation, she is endlessly inspired by lively discussions, new encounters, and unlikely assemblages. She is a firm believer in breaking down the false binaries that separate practice and theory, making and thinking and writing about making.   
As well as working on the MA at Guildhall School, Orley supervises PhD students, and runs postgraduate workshops on practice-as-research methods and creative-critical writing. She is a founding member of Guildhall's Practice-as-Research network, and a co-convenor of the London-wide Out of Practice (Oops) collective, open to all artists, academics and writers interested in creative-critical practices. 

www.emilyorley.com  

 

Previous experience 

Orley taught at Roehampton University for 17 years, where she was a Reader in Drama, Theatre and Performance before coming to Guildhall in January 2022. She has degrees from the Wimbledon School of Art and Cambridge and Roehampton Universities and trained at the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. 

 

View profile on Pure

Recent Research Outputs

Flying with the bone mothers

Orley, E., Hilevaara, K., Hawkes, J. (Ed.), Phillips, P. (Ed.), & Carson, J. (Ed.) (2026). Flying with the bone mothers. Demeter Press.

Holding together briefly

Orley, E., Preston, J. (Ed.), & Brown, A. (Ed.) (2025). Holding together briefly: I begin with an apostrophe and end with a question mark. Intellect Books.

Conversations Between Borders

Orley, E. (2024). Conversations Between Borders: Cyclical Thinking and Alternative Worlds. Intellect Books.

Editing: An experiment in speculative thinking

Orley, E., Nabugodi, M. (Ed.), & Ohge, C. (Ed.) (2022). Editing: An experiment in speculative thinking. Textual Cultures, 15(1).

Re-write the Rules

Orley, E. (2022). Re-write the Rules: A Walking Recipe . Digital or Visual Media https://walkcreate.gla.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/THE-WALKBOOK.pdf

The invisible boundaries of the moment: at a distance and through a different body’. In 'Thinking Through Relation: Encounters in Creative Critical Writing'

Orley, E., Mussgnug, F. (Ed.), Nabugodi, M. (Ed.), & Petrou, T. (Ed.) (2021). The invisible boundaries of the moment: at a distance and through a different body’. In 'Thinking Through Relation: Encounters in Creative Critical Writing'. Peter Lang.

Review of Mohamad Hafeda’s Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon: Bordering Practices in a Divided Beirut (2019)

Orley, E., & Hilevaara, K. (2020). Review of Mohamad Hafeda’s Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon: Bordering Practices in a Divided Beirut (2019). Site-Reading Writing Quarterly, (2).

‘Searching Shadows, Lighting Bones: Commemorative Performance as an Open-Ended Negotiation’. In Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration

Orley, E., Pinchbeck, M. (Ed.), & Westerside, A. (Ed.) (2019). ‘Searching Shadows, Lighting Bones: Commemorative Performance as an Open-Ended Negotiation’. In Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration. Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-97970-0

The Creative Critic: Writing As/About Practice

Orley, E., & Hilevaara, K. (Eds.) (2018). The Creative Critic: Writing As/About Practice. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Commémorer le lieu entre terre et papier : une méthode créative pour dialoguer avec les objets patrimoniaux

Orley, E. (2017). Commémorer le lieu entre terre et papier : une méthode créative pour dialoguer avec les objets patrimoniaux. (2017 ed.) Editions l'Harmattan.