Professor Erika Hughes

Biography

Professor Erika Hughes is Professor of Theatre for Social Change and Associate Dean of Research for Camberwell, Chelsea, and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts. She is a transdisciplinary researcher whose work sits at the intersection of performance, history, cultural studies, and environmental justice.

Her work as a theatre director has been seen in Germany, South Korea, Kenya, Pakistan, Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States, Austria, and Canada. She is currently working on a series of transdisciplinary performances that combine oral histories from waste pickers, environmental scientists, and policy experts to contribute to the ongoing UN global plastics treaty negotiations. Performances have been staged in Nairobi, Kenya in November 2023 (supported by GRID Arendal) and Ottawa, Canada in April 2024 (suppoted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and endorsed by the UK and Chilean governments).

She is the author of Holocaust Memory and Youth Performance (Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama, 2024), which offers the first book-length critical analysis of youth-focused plays and performances about the Holocaust. Through an examination of performances and dramatic literature from around the world, Holocaust Memory and Youth Performance shows the critical role youth performance plays in coping with the legacy of historical tragedy.

Her scholarship and practice research have been supported by grants from UKRI (NERC & ESRC), Innovate UK (in collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company), the US State Department (in collaboration with Kinnaird College for Women University in Lahore, Pakistan), and fellowships at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Bonn, the Technical University of Berlin, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She has studied at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts (Playwrights Horizons Theatre School), the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she earned her PhD in 2009.

Her forthcoming book, Making Mindful Performance, explores the historical and cultural relationship among performance, presence, and meditative practices.