Academic Bios

Helen Paris

Helen Paris is a Professor of Performance Making, specializing in somatic and immersive work and interdisciplinary research through her collaborations with the biological and ecological sciences. She currently serves on the faculty of Stanford’s Department of Theatre & Performance Studies (2011 to present). Paris is recognized as an artist-scholar with world-leading practice as research (PaR) outputs and pedagogy, integrating artistic research and scholarship, as demonstrated in her book Performing Proximity (2014) and her numerous peer reviewed articles in journals.

Paris has been Visiting Professor / Artist in Residence in the USA, Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia at institutions such as the Chicago School of Art, the Tate Modern, and the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. Recently she was Invited Professor at the Université Grenoble Alpes and Visiting Professor at Brasenose, Oxford. Paris is currently Artist in Residence at Canterbury Christ Church University. Previously, Paris was Reader at Brunel University, London (2000-2010) where she convened the MA in Contemporary Performance Making. She received her doctorate from the University of Surrey in 2000, exploring notions of the virtual and the visceral in live performance.

Leslie Hill

Leslie Hill is a Professor of Theatre and Performance Making at the University of Roehampton, London. She is interested in the intersections of theatre and Live Art with politics, activism and social justice movements. Her new book Sex, Suffrage and the Stage: First Wave Feminism in British Theatre was recently published for the UK suffrage centenary in 2018.

Previously, Hill was Associate Professor and Artistic Director of Stanford’s Department of Theatre & Performance Studies (2011-2017); she also served as convenor of the interdisciplinary arts Practice-Based PhD programme at the University of East London (2006-2010).

Originally from New Mexico, Hill holds a double BA in English and Philosophy from the University of New Mexico, an MA in Text & Performance from the University of Birmingham (UK) and a PhD in Theatre from the University of Glasgow. Hill was awarded a NESTA (National Endowment for Science Education and the Arts) fellowship in 2003 and has been Visiting Professor at institutions such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Brasenose College, Oxford.