18th to 20th November

BIO: I am a senior lecturer in applied theatre and participatory arts. To this role I bring over ten years of experience producing theatre education, youth theatre, community arts and children’s theatre projects in the UK and New Zealand. I am originally from the UK, and have been living in Aotearoa since 2009 in Tāmaki Makaurau with my two children and partner.

My research focuses on the ways in which theatre and the arts can contribute to social justice, environmental justice and well-being. Most of my research is ethnographic and/or arts-based, involving in depth, often collaborative, fieldwork to understand the relationship between examples of practice and the contexts in which they are produced. I am also involved in collaborative creative practice projects exploring issues of environmental and economic justice.

I have a particular interest in the diverse economies of applied theatre and community-based arts practice; the multiple ways in which projects and organisations are resourced and managed. I am interested in developing complex understandings of the interrelationship between policy, funding and practice. This area of research extends into the ways in which theatre and performance makers experiment with alternative economies and engage creatively with themes and issues related to economy. In all of my projects, I draw on a range of critical, poststructuralist, feminist and performance theories.