Welcome to New Blog Team Members

Maria, Bryan and I are delighted to welcome three new members to the blog team.

Our new team members enhance the geographic diversity and the range of expertise of the existing team, broadening the blog’s diversity.  Our two new editors are Sarah Weston, a recent PhD graduate of the University of Leeds and I-Ying Wu, a self-employed artist and freelance researcher based in Taiwan and Canada who recently completed their PhD at the University of Northampton in the UK.  We also have a third new team member, Nazlıhan Eda Erçin, an advanced PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, who will be occupying an Assistant Editor role as she has just moved to the USA for a new post.

Sarah Weston is based in the media and communication department at Leeds and believes that there is a need for more research into training for applied theatre, both within Higher Education and within communities.  She will be developing a new area on the blog devoted to this endeavour and is currently consulting her colleagues in the field.  If you are interested in discussing the development of this area with Sarah, and/or contributing to it, you can contact her at [email protected].

I-Ying Wu is a freelance practitioner and researcher of improvisation, its application to training in a Taiwanese setting and across cultural contexts.  With an extensive network in Taiwan and Canada where she is now based, we hope to broaden the international relevance of the Blog.  She is specifically developing an ‘Answer the Question’ (ATQ) section for the blog.  This has proven a stimulating feature of the TDPT journal and we are excited about the possibilities the blog might offer, given the immediacy and the multi-media possibilities inherent in the medium.  If you wish to contribute to the blog in a field that connects to I-Ying’s interests, or have ideas for the ATQ section of the blog, you may wish to write to her at [email protected].

N. Eda Erçin, our new blog Assistant Editor, has taken up a post at Louisiana State University (LSU), as an Instructor of Performance Studies and the manager of Hopkins Black Box Theater, an experimental theatre and classroom in the Department of Communication Studies. As an intercultural performer/researcher, she is seeking potential contributors around her areas of interest, especially in relation to the racial/ethnic, class-based/occupational/educational, linguistic, and age, gender, ability related diversities of the individual performer seeking to (continue to) train. In the first instance, she will seek these from her international network of practitioners including Turkey, the US, the UK and the Middle East. If you would like to contribute something to the blog that relates to Eda’s interests, please contact her at [email protected].

While we are welcoming three new team members, we also wish to extend a huge vote of thanks to Maria Kapsali, a founding Blog Editor, who is taking a six month sabbatical from editorial duties.  Maria has been instrumental in guiding the blog overall and developing ‘The Studio’.  Maria and Marie Gallagher’s year-long project, Two Trainers Prepare has also brought vitality and substance to the blog and we look forward to hearing where they wish to take this project in the future.  We wish Maria the very best for her well-earned sabbatical and look forward to her return to the team in the future.