Reka is a Bicentennary Research Fellow at the School of Arts, Cultures and Languages, University of Manchester.

She is also a freelance practitioner in socially engaged theatre and applied drama. Her (AHRC-funded) PhD (2018-2022) investigated creative and playful disruptions in public spaces as forms of civil disobedience, leaning on performance studies, play theory, and human geography. The work is now being developed into a book (contract with University of Manchester Press).

From 2022 to 2025, Reka was Postdoctoral Research Associate on the cross-disciplinary (AHRC) Care Aesthetics Project, led by professor James Thompson, which drew on performance studies, care ethics and health studies to propose a theoretical framework for the aesthetic, embodied and relational qualities of care. Case studies involved ethnographic fieldwork looking at relational care practices among care workers in London, healthcare workers and their patients in NHS secure dementia wards, artists working in healthcare contexts, as well as the care practices of community kitchens providing food and meals. She is co-director of The Care Lab, a public engagement platform that launched in partnership with The Whitworth and that organises events, workshops and festivals exploring the artful qualities of care, and the careful elements in art-making. 

Reka was awarded the Bicentenary Fellowship (2025-2028) to lead a cross-disciplinary research project that draws on performance studies, care ethics, and the emerging field of care aesthetics to examine everyday practices of solidarity in community organising in response to the rise of the far right in Europe. It explores its quotidian, relational enactments, and the role of spectators in shaping solidarity within contemporary times of ideological divisiveness.

Her interests are in aligning academic research cultures with socially-engaged practices, and the role of researchers-as-activists.

Reka is the recipient of the Emerging Scholars Award (2020) Common Grounds, Arts in Society Research Network, and the New Scholars Prize (2021), International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). Her research outputs include academic writing (articles, editorialship, etc) as well as public-facing events, workshops, talks and festivals.