Professor Kerrie Schaefer

I completed a BA Hons (Class 1) and PhD in the Centre for Performance Studies at the University of Sydney, NSW. My PhD drew on methods of rehearsal ethnography developed by a cross-disciplinary academic team in the now Dept. of Performance Studies. I applied these methods to analyse a rehearsal process by contemporary performance company, The Sydney Front, after the company employed me to document the making of Don Juan (The Performance Space, Redfern, 1990-1991).

In 1999 I was appointed Lecturer in Drama at the University of Newcastle, NSW. There I joined the Performance, Community Development and Social Change research group led by the late Associate Professor David Watt. The group initiated practice-based research in performance-based community cultural development taking advantage, where possible, of remaining community cultural development infrastructure in local government (Maitland, Lake Macquarie and Newcastle). 

In 2007 I relocated to the UK to take up a position as Senior Lecturer in Drama and co-lead (with Fiona Macbeth) an MA in Applied Theatre at the University of Exeter. 

In 2023 I was promoted to Professor of Community Performance.