Profile
I am Course Leader for the MA/MFA in Actor Training and Coaching. After a successful career as a secondary school drama teacher, I ran away with the circus, specialising in static trapeze. My PhD research questioned the ethics and tact-filled practices that are used when working with adolescent students in circus. I foreground my neurodivergency, feminism and class as a political intervention when considering radical equality within academia and conservatoire training.
I am a Senior Fellow of the HEA.
I was a successful drama teacher and Head of Drama in comprehensive schools across London and the South East of England and have worked as a freelance director and educator specialising in circus training and contemporary performance. I trained as a director at Central under the mentorship of Catherine Alexander, and was subsequently short-listed for the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award on four occasions between 2003-2007. My professional experience as an associate director saw my alignment with Orla O’Loughlin (Sob, The Traverse and now Guildhall), John Wright (as ASM on Only Fools No Horses 2009) and with Jatinder Verma (educator on Journey to the West 2001-2002).
I found a permanent home at Central in 2013 working with pedagogy and risk-taking. I have worked for Portsmouth University, The University of Greenwich, Brunel University, Tara Arts, Surrey County Arts, The Why Not Institute - and run a few bars in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
I delivered the Keynote address in AusAct 2019 at Queensland University of Technology: ‘Vulnerability in a Crisis: Pedagogy, critical reflection and positionality in Actor Training ‘.
Areas of Expertise
- Freedom and coercion in Pedagogy
- Consent and boundaries in Actor Training
- Dignity and compassion in teaching
- Risk, vulnerability, and wellbeing
- Oracy
- Phenomenology
- Clown
- Failure
- Neuroinclusivity
PhD Supervision
I am currently supervising a PhD with the University of Dundee, on the subject of oracy, wellbeing and gender in primary education.
I have been contracted to examine a PhD in January 2022 for Royal Holloway University on the subject of Actor Training and Interdisciplinarity.
Key Publications
2022. ‘Twenty First Century Pedagogy: A Reflection’ in Be The Change: Learning and Teaching for the Creative Industries. ed. Anna McNamara. (New York: Nova Science Publishers). (Forthcoming.)
2020. Vulnerability in a Crisis: Pedagogy, Critical Reflection and Positionality in Actor Training. Fusion Journal, 17, 6-19.
2018. ‘Performance and Pedagogy’ in Performing Interdisciplinarity: Working Across Disciplinary Boundaries through an Active Aesthetic ed. Experience Bryon. (London: Routledge), pp. 118-130.
2017. Rupturing the cycles of Shame in Education, TEDx Royal Central
Register of Interest
Nothing to declare
