Dr Elizabeth Bennett

Biography

Dr Elizabeth Bennett (she/her) is a Lecturer in Drama. Her teaching specialisms include Theatre and Human Rights, Theatre, Gender and Sexuality, Voice and Movement, and Writing Lyrics. Prior to her appointment at Essex she worked as a postdoctoral performance researcher, at UEA, Surrey, and Royal Holloway, researching street music, arts pedagogy and autoethnography, research with communities, and the Public Acts programme at The National Theatre, London. Her main areas of interest are contemporary performance in relation to space, place, and landscape, participatory performance practices, community arts, performative writing and voice. Her doctoral thesis, 'Singing the South Downs Way: Affect in Performance and Practice', was an autoethnographic study of folk singing in Sussex. Elizabeth has held visiting lecturer posts at Royal Holloway University of London and the University of Winchester, designing courses that explore theatre, geography, performance, and mobility. She performs regularly as an unaccompanied folk singer and as part of natural voice community choirs.