Joe joined POLART as a PhD researcher after what he describes as a \u201cslightly unconventional\u201d route into doctoral research. Having returned to academia after six years away to complete an MA, Joe was clear that if the opportunity arose to continue, he would take it. \u201cWhen I saw the POLART project,\u201d he explains, \u201cI knew it was the perfect fit for my background.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That background brings together performance, political communication and a long-standing interest in social justice. Joe\u2019s engagement with theatre began early. Encouraged by his parents to attend drama classes \u201cto come out of my shell,\u201d he soon became deeply involved in local youth theatre, performing at the Edinburgh Fringe and eventually going on to study Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance at the University of York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During his undergraduate studies, Joe\u2019s interests increasingly focused on narrative and dramaturgy. He performed dramaturgy on Professor David Barnett\u2019s Brecht in Practice<\/em> research project and was longlisted for the Papatango New Writing Prize. After graduating, he continued to work creatively, writing and producing the audio drama Technophobia<\/em> and working freelance in script development alongside coordination and management roles at Bradford Literature Festival and Lightwaves Festival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside this creative practice ran an equally strong political interest. From a young age, Joe was engaged in politics, volunteering in a local parliamentary office before he was old enough to vote. When he returned to academia, he decided to pursue this strand more directly through an MA in International Public and Political Communication at the University of Sheffield. There, he undertook research on media reporting of people with long-term health conditions during the pandemic and wrote his dissertation on the Green Party\u2019s campaign at the 2024 general election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n POLART offered a way to bring these strands together. \u201cIt felt like the perfect opportunity to combine my interests in performance and politics,\u201d Joe says. From there, he developed his PhD proposal around another long-standing passion: environmental and ecological politics. He has written for the newsletter of a global environmental action group and describes interviewing scientists and activists from around the world as formative, giving him \u201ca strong sense of the importance of securing environmental justice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joe\u2019s PhD focuses on the role of performance and festivals in global climate governance, particularly around the UN Climate Conferences (COP). While there is broad scientific and public agreement on the urgency of climate action, Joe notes that \u201cif there is such a thing as evidence-based policymaking, ecological policy is one area where it isn\u2019t working.\u201d This gap raises important questions about how different forms of knowledge beyond scientific evidence enter policy processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Climate-focused performances have become a recurring feature around COP events. Climate Change Theatre Action, for example, was a federation of such climate-themed performance festivals and most recently in Brazil, significant performances and festivals took place, some sanctioned by the conference, others not. Joe\u2019s research explores how these performances operate across different contexts and with different aims: to inform, to protest, to legitimise policy or to amplify marginalised voices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Central to his work is a set of critical questions: Who gets access to these artistic spaces? And do these interventions challenge or reproduce existing power structures?<\/em> As Joe puts it, \u201cAre these festivals opening up a process through which alternative forms of knowledge are mobilised, or are they mostly preaching to the choir?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the coming years, Joe will explore how performance both shapes and is shaped by climate policy, contributing to POLART\u2019s wider interest in art as a space for alternative ways of knowing and governing in the global contemporary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joe is one of two PhD studentships on the POLART project, studying the role of performance and theatre festivals in protesting, legitimising and informing at COP. His background spans theatre, with a BA in Theatre: Writing, Directing and Performance from the University of York and professional script development experience, and politics, with experience researching, writing and campaigning for political parties and organisations, and an MA in International Public and Political Communication from the University of Sheffield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joe joined POLART as a PhD researcher after what he describes as a \u201cslightly unconventional\u201d route into doctoral research. Having returned to academia after six years away to complete an MA, Joe was clear that if the opportunity arose to continue, he would take it. \u201cWhen I saw the POLART project,\u201d he explains, \u201cI knew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-blog"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.romulusstudio.com\/polart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Biography<\/h3>\n\n\n\n