Dr Rebecca Hillman

I joined the University of Exeter in 2015. Before that I worked at the University of Reading, where I developed curricula on the relationship between activism and performance. I also worked as a lecturer at Kingston University, and learning mentor at a pupil referral unit in Slough.

Work and housing precarity, street protest, and trade union organising were formative experiences driving my research at that time. My PhD sought to reclaim the political value of dramatic art through practice led research. I identified effective practice, paying special attention to theatre made by/for labour movement activists in Britain since the 1960s. I collaborated with Reading Trades Council to develop an experimental anti-cuts play that analysed the impact of privatisation and austerity measures on our community, which took place in a disused, town centre pub.

These experiences continue to underpin my work. I have given papers on a wide range of issues concerned with performance as political activism at international conferences and public events. A module I wrote in 2016, called Activism and Performance, enables me to examine in depth, with my students, protest and other activist tactics as they evolve around the world, through the lens of performance. My recent publications re-evaluate performance as an organizing tool in class struggle, the role of agitprop theatre in political activism, and the return of socialist and communist imagery in contemporary political movements. I am also editor of the new Methuen Drama Student Edition of Willy Russell's musical Blood Brothers. My script commemorating the centenary of the Huntley and Palmers’ 1916 Women’s Strike was performed by women from the GMB and UCU unions in 2016, and later that year my work with Banner Theatre, Reel News, Townsend Productions and the General Federation of Trade Unions came to fruition in the first of a series of events to build links between artists and the trade union movement. I recently led the AHRC Research, Development & Engagement Fellowship, Performing Resistance: the role of theatre and performance in 21^st century workers’ movements, which built directly on those initiatives. As well as writing a book for Bloomsbury (2026) to draw together this research, Performing Resistance creates new links between artists and workers' movements in Brazil, India, North America, and the UK. Project workshops and website deepen understanding of working-class culture and the role of performance in the contemporary labour movement.

I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy/Advance HE and a member of Exeter's Centre for Social Mobility and Underrepresented Students Working Group. My Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice focused on centralising widening participation into universities, social inclusion policy, and developing a social justice model that would implement ongoing support for students from disadvantaged backgrounds beyond their entrance into university. I am a board member of Open Book Publishers, adjunct faculty of the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, and proudly served as a trustee and advisor for Future’s Venture Radical Independent Arts Fund 2016-2021. I am an active member of the Centre for Performance Histories and Cultures and Contemporary Performance Practices at the University of Exeter and the Political Performances Working Group of the International Federation of Theatre Research. I am also Exeter University UCU rep to and President of the Exeter & District Trades Union Council.

I especially welcome PhD proposals from anyone interested in theatre and the labour movement and other intersections of performance, politics, and social justice, as well as brodening access to the arts and education, and working through practice.