11 Last checked  24 January 2023

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I joined the University of Huddersfield as Professor of Drama in January 2012. I was previously at the National University of Ireland – Cork (University College Cork) from 2005 and was Head of Department when I left at the end of 2011. From 1991-2005 I was at the University of Northampton where I was Course Leader for the innovative BA(Hons) Performance Studies course between 1994 and 2001. Since 2008 I have held the post of Visiting Professor in Performance Studies and Creative Practice at Northampton. I have also held posts at the University of East Anglia, Derby Tertiary College, NORCAT (King Lynn) and have been a guest lecturer at a variety of institutions from the University of Malta to King’s College, Cambridge.

From 1986-89 I was a self-employed Performance Specialist enaged in a wide variety of projects including devised physical performance, clowning, storytelling, devising staff training programmes for companies such as The Body Shop, and running workshops in prisons, adult education centres, a drug and alcohol resources centre, and a centre for excluded pupils.

Prior to studying for a first degree in Drama (with Philosophy) at UEA in 1983, I created solo performances and worked with little known fringe theatre companies such as The Raging Id. I also worked as an ASM and theatre technician at a multi-function arts centre.

I have a number of research strands and projects which congregate around a network of issues and processes of creativity, devising, improvisation, pedagogy and health. I am partly concerned with the impediments to these processes and ways of overcoming them although that is often an implicit rather than explicit condern in my publications. These questions inform my practice-as-research work as well and also my pedagogy.