Welcome Aisling Keavey

Extant are delighted to announced that Aisling Keavey has been appointed as our Thinker-In-Residence as part of the Thomas Pocklington Get Set Progress Scheme and starts their role in October 2025.

Our Operations Director, Ian Abbott says:  “We’re delighted to welcome Aisling to the team as Thinker-in-Residence, a unique role which is as part of our ongoing commitment to fostering innovative approaches and fresh thinking in visual impairment and the performing arts. We’re excited to discover how it will keep Extant at the forefront of visually impaired practice, bring us into new territories, and help us reflect on our internal practices. Thanks to the support of Thomas Pocklington Trust, this opportunity will bring progress and potency for both Aisling and Extant and we welcome them to the team to begin this journey.”

Aisling is an independent researcher and artist based in London, with a background in photography, moving image, and archival practice. Her work explores diasporic identity, memory, and the politics of representation, drawing on Homi K. Bhabha’s theory of hybridity and the “third space.” She holds an MRes in Photography from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology and a BA in Fine Art Print and Time-Based Media from Wimbledon College of Arts. Her research has been presented internationally, including at the University of Utrecht, the Women’s History Association of Ireland, and the British Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies Conference.

Alongside her academic and artistic practice, she brings lived experience as a disabled artist, which informs her approach to accessibility, care, and collaboration in creative contexts. She has worked across museums, galleries, and higher education — including roles at University of the Arts London — developing inclusive research and engagement practices. Her current work investigates how personal and collective histories can be activated through visual culture, touch, and performance, and she is excited to explore how these ideas might resonate with Extant’s pioneering work in accessible theatre and creative research.

“I’m thrilled to be joining Extant as Thinker in Residence, where I can contribute to an organisation that reimagines access and storytelling through lived experience. My practice and research are rooted in exploring the intersections of memory, identity, and representation, and I’m particularly interested in how disabled artists can reshape visual and narrative spaces to make them more expansive and inclusive. This residency offers an exciting opportunity to think critically and creatively about accessibility not only as a logistical consideration, but as a generative artistic principle — a way of reconfiguring how we see, feel, and connect through art.”

October 2025