Dr Stuart Andrews
Senior Lecturer in Theatre

Summary

I am interested in the ways performance practice and research can help us understand, practise, and manage the places around us.

As a Co-director of Performing City Resilience, I work with emergency planners, culture directors, organisations, and companies to develop/implement creative strategies in response to local and global challenges. This collaborative work has led these partners to think in new ways about their work and to revise key policies and procedures.

I have published internationally on arts, architecture, culture, emergency and resilience planning, performance, and place. Publications comprise books and academic articles, professional reporting and blog posts. In August 2025, Patrick Duggan, my research collaborator on Performing City Resilience, and I published Performing New Orleans: Rethinking Resilience in Art and Everyday Life (Louisiana State University Press) and we are currently developing a new book for Palgrave.

Within academic institutions, I have held leadership roles in research, international partnership development and learning and teaching at subject/department/school level. I focus particularly on facilitating research and research impact development, designing and managing degree programmes, and brokering partnerships. In my current work at Brunel University of London, I support Arts and Humanities colleagues enhance the impact of their research, lead the Brunel BA Theatre degree programme, and teach modules on performance, place, and resilience on programmes including the MA in Wargaming and Resilience Planning. Throughout my leadership and teaching, I am concerned to facilitate engaging, energising, and generative environments that support creative thinking and collaboration.

Attending to creative practice is critical to my work. This is important when researching the significance of arts practice in given contexts, in supporting arts and resilience organisations in the development of innovative practices, and in valuing artistic appraoches to research, teaching, and management. I supervise and have examined 'practice research' and conventional written doctoral projects - and examined both individual and collaborative submissions.

Qualifications

BA/PhD

Responsibility

Co-director: Performing City Resilience

Research Impact Co-Lead (Department of Arts and Humanities)

Programme Lead: BA Theatre

Brunel Hydrogen Arts Lead