People

James Thompson is the Project Director of In Place of War and a Professor of Applied and Social Theatre in the Department of Drama at the University of Manchester.  In Place of War came out of his work in Sri Lanka, where in 2000 he was invited by UNICEF to run training courses for practitioners working with young people affected by conflict. During these sessions, James was impressed by the extensive use of theatre in response to the 20 year long civil war, which in turn, led to many of the research questions addressed by In Place of War.  James has continued work with close colleagues in Sri Lanka, and through In Place of War, has continued to explore his interest in the relationship between performance and war.
James specialises in performance in conflict and disaster zones, theatre with offenders, theatre and development and Sri Lankan theatre. He has documented theatre practice in Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo, Banda Aceh and the UK.

Michael Balfour is the co-director of In Place of War and a Professor of Applied and Social Theatre at the School of VATE at Griffith University, Australia. Michael has experience running community drama projects in Northern and Southern Ireland, and this has developed his interest in the relationship between performance and conflict.  In response, Michael's research focuses on the affect of war on artists and the use of arts during times of extreme social and political crisis.  He has also investigated the use of theatre during the Second World War, with particular focus on Fascist propaganda and Russian re-education programmes.

Michael has documented theatre practice in Northern Ireland, Kosovo and Australia.

Jenny Hughes is a Lecturer in Applied Theatre in the Department of Drama at the University of Manchester. Through her work at the Centre for Applied Theatre Research (of which she is a co-director), she has extensive experience developing, researching and evaluating theatre projects in a number of settings (prisons, refugee communities, schools, community centres, etc). Jenny was In Place of War's Research Associate for the first three years of the project and was responsible for 'mapping' performance practice in places affected by conflict and by displaced communities in the UK.

Jenny specialises in theatre in places of conflict, participatory theatre with young people, applied theatre evaluation and research, theatre and political protest and theatre in the Middle East.  She has documented theatre practice in Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestinian Territories, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Britain and Sudan.

Rachel Finn is the current Research Associate for In Place of War.  With a background in Sociology, Rachel has been researching performance and national identity among the children of immigrants in America.  Through her work on this project, Rachel is keen to expand her understanding of nation building and performance in relation to marginalised communities in other contexts. Her primary In Place of War responsibilities include the sorting of already collected as well as incoming data, the maintenance of the practitioners network and the planning of the next phase of the project.

Rachel's research interests include performance and identity, national belonging, construction of nation, cultural theory and marginalised communities.

Charlotte Hennessy is a PhD student attached to the project's Sri Lankan case study. Charlotte's PhD builds on her experience as a VSO volunteer in Sri Lanka working as an applied theatre practitioner with AHIMSA, a conflict resolution and peace building NGO. Her PhD explores the use of theatre, primarily with young people, as a response to the civil war and questions the possibilities and problems of theatre projects and peace building after the 2002 ceasefire in Sri Lanka. Charlotte's academic work interrogates the implications of play, education and reconciliation in relation to the context of war. This work necessarily centres on grass roots theatre projects with NGO and in refugee camps and addresses the ways in which theatre both explicitly and implicitly addresses conflict.

Charlotte specialises in applied theatre, youth theatre, Sri Lankan theatre and armed conflict and peace studies.

Alison Jeffers is a final year PhD student on the In Place of War project. With 10 years experience with community arts work in the UK, as well as 10 years of teaching and practice in theatre, Alison has a stable platform from which to study the use of theatre by refugee communities in Britain. Her work particularly questions the relationship between performance and speech acts among asylum seekers, and the ways in which theatre is used as a means of self-representation among refugee communities. These themes initiate an exploration of the use of theatre as a resistance to discrimination, performance of belonging in the UK, and display of traditions from refugees' countries of origin that legitimises refugee status in a cultural and social, if not a political, way.

Alison specialises in verbatim and documentary theatre, Irish theatre, story telling and the use of the arts for participatory research.

Ananda Breed is a PhD student researching theatre, justice and reconciliation in Rwanda. Ananda's work focuses on the relationship between theatre and nation-building in post-genocide Rwanda through an examination of established theatre, grassroots theatre and the Gacaca courts. She investigates the ways in which culture has been used to construct a non-ethnic Rwandese national community, to address genocide and to promote reconciliation. In addition to researching theatre in relation to conflict, Ananda has also co-directed a participatory theatre project on domestic violence that toured nationally in Rwanda.

Ananda specialises in performance theory, applied theatre, nation and memory, postcolonial studies and theatre for development. She has documented theatre practice in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi.