The Performance, Philosophy and the Body research group at Leeds Beckett University explores the relationship between philosophical theories and a wide range of body-based performance practices, forms and strategies. These include live art, dance, contemporary theatre, body art, experimental performance, bioart, the historical avant garde, choreography, and improvisation. Our research draws on bodies of philosophy as well as philosophies of the body to investigate the ways in which performance as a body-based practice both problematises and generates philosophical thought. We seek to explore how philosophical traditions inform the practice of making, reading, and writing about contemporary performance practices and, in turn, how contemporary performance-making might provide new insights into the historical perspectives and philosophical traditions it inherits. The Performance, Philosophy and the Body group celebrates a strong emphasis on practice-led research as a means of testing out philosophies in and through the body.  As well as discipline-specific approaches, our theoretical influences are interdisciplinary, drawing on recent developments in the social sciences, gender studies, cultural studies and the biological sciences. Overall, our aim is to approach performance as a philosophical practice and philosophy as an embodied performative practice.