Gabriella Giannachi is Professor in Performance and New Media, and Director of the Centre for Intermedia at the University of Exeter, which promotes advanced interdisciplinary research in performance and the arts through collaborations between artists, academics and scientists from a range of disciplines. Her most recent and forthcoming book publications include: Virtual Theatres: an Introduction (Routledge: 2004); Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, ed. with Nigel Stewart (Peter Lang: 2005); The Politics of New Media Theatre (Routledge: 2007); Performing Presence: Between the Live and the Simulated, co-authored with Nick Kaye (MUP, forthcoming: 2010); Archaeologies of Presence, co-edited with Nick Kaye and Michael Shanks (Routledge, forthcoming: 2011) and Performing Mixed Reality, co-authored with Steve Benford (MITP, forthcoming: 2011). She has published articles in Contemporary Theatre Review, Leonardo, Performance Research, TDR and PAJ, and developed conference papers for IVA 2009, 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, CHI 2008 and CHI 2009 where the paper her co-authored paper with Steve Benford, Boriana Koleva and Tom Rodden received a best paper award. She is an investigator in the RCUK funded Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub (2009-2014). She has a BA from Turin University and a PhD from Cambridge University, UK.