Leadership team

Head of Department

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I’m Professor of Drama, and Head of Communications, Drama and Film. I research and teach on popular and political performance in eighteenth century and contemporary British theatre. I am particularly interested in questions of cultural participation, see my collaborative projects Ecologies of Amateur Theatre (2018) and Devising Performance: A Critical History (2015).

Subject Lead (Communications)

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I'm an anthropologist of data and communications infrastructure. I work at the intersection of critical data studies, digital anthropology, infrastructure studies and the emerging field of social studies of outer space. My research concentrates on the failure and breakdown of communications infrastructure, with a focus on the data centre industry and the space sector. I'm interested in the infrastructure, energy, and human labour that is expended on keeping communications services - especially the internet - up and running 24/7. I have conducted extensive fieldwork with data centre providers, business continuity experts, resilience and preparedness practitioners, and space sector professionals. My methods are ethnographic, media-archaeological and historical-archival.

Subject Lead (Film)

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I am Head of Film and Television and Associate Professor in Screen Studies. My research focuses on American independent film and contemporary documentary production, with a particular interest in the representation and performance of risk.

Director of Research and Impact

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I joined the University of Exeter in 2017 after twelve years at Aberystwyth University, where I was a core member of the team that made Aberystwyth an internationally renowned centre for Performance Studies.

I have published widely on contemporary performance practice, the history of performance art in a British context, performance historiography and archiving, performance and landscape, and performance as a mode of knowledge formation and dissemination.

Director of Global Engagement

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I am a theatre practitioner, educator and scholar. I trained at the Jacques Lecoq School of Theatre in Paris and began my professional career with the Zimbabwean theatre company, Over The Edge. Since then, I have worked on a range of theatre projects across the UK, Europe, the USA and southern Africa with support from national and international creative industry partners.

Co-Director of Business Engagement and Innovation

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Dr Anna Kiernan is Associate Professor of Creativity and Literary Culture at the University of Exeter and a Director of Business Engagement and Innovation in the department of Communications, Drama and Film. Anna was recruited to the University of Exeter in 2019, to jointly establish and lead the MA Creativity: Innovation and Business Strategy (now the MA Creative Industries).

Director of Postgraduate Research

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I am Professor in Community Performance. Reflecting my expertise in supervising postgraduate research students, I am Department Director for Postgraduate Research. I have a BA Hons (Class 1) and PhD (Performance Studies) from the University of Sydney, Australia.