Gaenor Stoate is a teaching fellow at the University of Waikato, lecturing in the Faculty of Education on secondary drama curriculum papers and also in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences where she teaches undergraduate theatre papers. More than twenty years of experience in secondary school drama classrooms and spaces of inquiry -in the UK and Aotearoa New Zealand- has sustained Gaenor’s interest in Drama and Theatre for Social Development. Never far away from either a learning space or a performance space, Gaenor participates in a range of theatre and drama projects in Hamilton and New Plymouth, in addition to her work as a curriculum consultant in Drama and English departments in secondary schools. Gaenor is in her second year of a creative practice PhD at the University of Waikato, exploring the creative, transformative social action aspects of the ensemble in devised work.
Originally from the UK, Lucy is a Master of Arts Research candidate at Griffith University, and works as an inclusive drama practitioner for a Plural Theatre in Brisbane. Plural Theatre specialises in creating and facilitating drama workshops for marginalised and vulnerable children and young people for whom access to drama and theatre may be less accessible. In her role at Plural, Lucy works primarily with young people in and on the edge of out-of-home care, and most recently those transitioning from care to independence, using drama to explore participants’ emotions, ideas and thoughts around transition. Out of this work evolved a need to better understand young people’s experience of transition in order to develop intentional, young-person centred practice which can better support participants to articulate and express their views and needs and discover creative ways to share these with people who can help them on their journey to adulthood.
Moe is a doctoral candidate at the University of Auckland’s Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre. Informed by my current work with Applied Theatre Consultants Ltd., in the framework of which I facilitate Theatre-in-Education workshops to encourage discussion about domestic violence among young people, and my drama pedagogy-informed practice as an intercultural immersion language teacher, my research investigates how process drama can act as a critical multicultural pedagogy that fosters young people’s democratic citizenship. Particularly, I am interested in how process drama can take young people beyond mere empathetic identification with so-called Others by creating a forum in which conceptions of culture and phenomena of xeno- and islamophobia can be explored. How can such an embodied inquiry provoke critical reflection on the ubiquitous ‘ressentiment’ towards refugees that has emerged around the globe in recent years in the face of the so-called refugee crisis and the rise of Islamist terror?
Eva Göksel is a doctoral research assistant at the Centre for Oral Communication at the University of Teacher Education Zug, in Zug, Switzerland. She is also a PhD candidate at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, focusing on Drama in Education in teacher training. Her other research interests include storytelling and cultivating a culture of listening in elementary school classrooms. Eva coordinates the English Teachers Association Switzerland (ETAS) Drama and Literature Special Interest Group and she co-organises the annual Drama in Education Days in Konstanz, Germany: www.dramapaedagogik.de
Martha Lamont is a Primary School Teacher from Dublin, Ireland. Martha recently completed the M.Ed in Drama in Education in The University of Dublin, Trinity College (2015-2017). She completed her B.A in Sociology and French in 2006 (University of Dublin, Trinity College) and holds a Higher Diploma in Primary Teaching (Froebel College of Education, Ireland) and a Post Graduate Diploma in Special Education (HETAC). Martha has been working as a classroom teacher and resource teacher for ten years, and has taught in primary schools in Ireland, Australia and England. Her research interests include arts education, drama for children with special educational needs and early childhood education. Martha has volunteered with Aspire Educational Drama Classes, run in conjunction with Trinity College and organised under the direction of Dr. Carmel O’Sullivan of the School of Education, and has taught afterschool drama to children with special educational needs in her local community.
