Dr Stuart Andrews
Senior Lecturer in Theatre

Summary

I am interested in the ways perfomance 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, as demonstrated in New Orleans (USA) and the UK. Critically, recent collaborative work led the Emergency Planning Society (international) to embed creativity in its core competencies.

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. Currently, I am working with Dr Patrick Duggan on two new monographs: Performing New Orleans: Rethinking Resilience in Art and Everyday Life (Louisiana State University Press, forthcoming fall 2025) and work on Performance, Place and Crisis for Palgrave. At Brunel University of London, I am engaged in interdisciplinary research and teaching on place, performance, and resilience which includes teaching on the BA Theatre and MA in Wargaming and Resilience Planning programmes.

Within academic institutions, I have held leadership roles in research, learning and teaching, and associated areas at subject, department and/or school level. These have focused particularly on facilitating research and research impact development, designing and managing degree programmes, and growing international partnerships. In this work, I am particularly concerned to facilitate engaging, energising, and generative environments that support creative thinking and collaboration.

Attending to creative practice is critical to my work: in researching the significance of arts practice in given contexts and internationally, in facilitating generative arts-led projects, and in supervising and examining doctoral projects. I supervise and have examined 'practice research' and conventional written doctoral projects - and examined both individual and collaborative submissions.

Qualifications

BA/PhD

Responsibility

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

Programme Lead: BA Theatre

Brunel Hydrogen Arts Lead