Katrina is a director, cinematographer and award-winning interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of performance and moving image. Her collaborative films, installations and on-line works have been presented at venues and festivals worldwide. Through embodied cinematography, improvisation and rigorous structural processes, she creates powerful, emotionally driven works that resonate deeply with audiences.
Katrina has received funding from various bodies, including Creative Scotland, Arts Council England, British Council and British Film Institute. Several films by Katrina are held in major collections, including LUX Artists’ Moving Image and Routledge’s Online Performance Archive and have been exhibited at the Hayward Gallery, Royal Scottish Academy and the ICA.
Katrina received the Honorary Award at Choreoscope Dance Film Festival, Barcelona (2022), a Career Achievement Award at Dance Camera West Festival, Los Angeles (2020), and the Creative Scotland Award (2002). For 15 years, Katrina directed arts programmes for UK television, making films and series for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. Katrina has written and published widely and co-founded the International Journal of Screendance.
A much sought-after lecturer and mentor, Katrina teaches screendance world-wide and has initiated and facilitated numerous workshops, courses and symposia. Before arriving at LCDS, Katrina established an MSC in Dance and Media at Dundee University and was Director of Graduate Screendance at the University of Utah, USA.
Katrina has a BA (Hons) Dance Theatre from Laban, London (1985-88), a postgraduate in Electronic Imaging from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee (1990-91), and was awarded a PhD by Publication by Edinburgh Napier University in 2023.
I am currently working on the following projects:
- The third edition of Making Video Dance, to be published by Routledge in 2026.
- “Moving Through the Frame: a collaborative exchange project exploring movement-based artist film as a vehicle for personal storytelling and emotional connection with local and international audiences.”
I welcome PhD proposals and research collaborations in the following areas:
- Screendance: practices; histories; theories
- Multidisciplinary practice-as-research, including documentary, interactive, installation, dance and technology
- PhD by Publication
Supervised PhD projects:
- Practice-as-research PhD on dance and sound interactive/ Ai collaboration (current).
Examined PhD projects:
- Dionysios Tsaftaridis (2009) ‘Maya Deren's screendances: a formalist approach,’ PhD, University of Roehampton, University of Surrey (external examiner).
Publications or practice outputs:
- McPherson, K. & Rosenberg, D. (2024) 'Making Television Dance (Again)', The International Journal of Screendance, 14(1). DOI: 10.18061/ijsd.v14i1.10145.
- McPherson, K. & Heaslip, R. (dirs.) (2022). Water & Man. Scotland: Creative Scotland.
- McPherson, K. (2026) ‘There is a Place: Cinetrance, Trans-corporeality and New Ways of Seeing’. In: Still Jumping: Mediated Performance and Moving Image Across Asia and The Global Stage, 2004-2024. Eds. Dong Xianliang,Elysa Wendi, Emilie Choi Sin-yi, CCDC & Typesetter Press.