Maria is a creative and academic based in London. Her creative work and scholarship are deeply entwined and merge choreographing thoughts, writing gestures, scrutinising archives, dancing ideas and filming movement.

As creative, Maria has worked on existential and phenomenological ideas about the subject's inner and outer space and created works for the stage, such as I am where I am not (2007,2012), Yerma (2005) and Binnacle Notebooks I & II (2003, 2005). She has also explored embodiment in electronic music, data mapping and sonification of human gesture through collaboration with composer Diana Salazar in the piece Corporeal Cartography (2015).

As a researcher, Maria's work sits at the intersection between cultural studies, performance and body studies. She has presented her research, lectured, and performed her work internationally.

Maria is the recipient of the best artistic interpretation prize at the Lucienne Lamballe dance competition (France) and the Pauline Hodgens Memorial Prize for the best work in dance analysis at the University of Surrey (UK)

Before becoming a creative and academic, Maria was a professional ballet dancer, holding positions such as soloist at the Thuringer Staatsballet and principal dancer at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern (Germany). During those years, she interpreted leading roles in classical ballet repertoire and contemporary works by choreographers such as William Forsythe, Diettmar Seyffert, Nils Christe and Mario Schröder.

Maria graduated from The John Cranko School in Stuttgart and holds a Master's Degree and a PhD in dance, focusing on the intersection between the body, philosophy and History (2021). She is currently an associate professor at Middlesex University London and a freelance creative.