Rhonda Blair’s work has been at the intersection of theatre practice and theory. She has numerous articles on applications of cognitive sciences to acting, directing, text, and reception; books include The Actor, Image, and Action: Acting and Cognitive Neuroscience (Routledge 2008) and Theatre, Performance and Cognition: Languages, Bodies and Ecologies (Methuen 2016, co-edited with Amy Cook). She has directed and performed in over 70 productions and has created original solo and devised performance work. She is particularly interested in how current research on the brain, body, thought, feeling, language, and cultural “ecologies” informs and empowers us when we make theatre. She was president of the American Society for Theatre Research 2009-2012, and received its 2019 Distinguished Scholar Award.

Brad Jackson is a doctoral candidate at the University of British Columbia. His doctoral research focuses on the intersections of cognitive poetics, cognitive linguistics, and narrative film, specifically, the role of multimodal figuration in film analysis. Brad’s dissertation project “Cognitive Poetics of Cinema” explores the role of multimodality and figurative meaning in representations of character emotion and experience through the lens of cognition. He has presented his work on cognitive poetics in theatre and film at several international conferences, including Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities (2017, 2018, 2019) and the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (2021, 2022) and has published work in the film journal Projections (2022) and the Baltic Screen Media Review (2023).

Scott C. Knowles, PhD, (he/him) is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Arts Administration at Southern Utah University (SUU). His scholarship focuses on the intersections between cognitive science, emotion, and theatre, with specific emphasis in directing and dramaturgy. His directing work focuses primarily on theatre for social change, working to involve audience, company, and community in issues beyond the walls of the theatre through a variety of outreach approaches. He serves as the co-director for the Wooden O Symposium and Shakespeare Studies Minor at SUU and is a reader for both Words Cubed at the Utah Shakespeare Festival and the New Play Lab at Kayenta Center of the Arts. In 2017, Scott was honored with SUU’s Distinguished Faculty for Diversity and Inclusion Award based on his work with The Laramie Project. He has published in Etudes, A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage, and Theatre Topics.

Bruce McConachie has been writing about theatre, cognition, performance, and film from 2000 to the present. His early books include American Theatre in the Culture of the Cold War: Producing and Contesting Containment (2004), Engaging Audiences: A cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre (2008), and Theatre and Mind (2013). Since his retirement from the University of Pittsburgh, his work his focused on enactive cognition, human evolution, and cultural evolution. These latter books include Evolution, Cognition, and Performance (2015), The Routledge Companion to Theatre, Performance, and Cognitive Science (with Rick Kemp) (2019), and Drama, Politics, and Evolution (2021). He is currently working on a book tentatively titled Hollywood Climate Films: An Evolutionary History and Critique.  Bruce and his wife Stephanie are happily living in Silver Spring, Maryland

Dr. Carla Neuss is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Baylor University. She is currently working on a monograph that traces transnational circulations of medieval biblical drama. She earned her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies at UCLA, having previously received her B.A. in English Literature at U.C. Berkeley and her MPhil in Medieval Studies at the University of Oxford. She was a postdoctoral fellow from 2021-2023 at Yale University in Religion and Literature. Her writing has been published in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Exemplaria, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, and the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism. As a playwright and director, her award-winning work has been staged in the U.S., U.K. and Ecuador.

I’m Professor of Performance at the University of Kent with research interests in contemporary performance and cognitive neuroscience, applied and socially engaged theatre, autobiographical drama and performance ethnography. My publications include Gertrude Stein (Northcote House, 2007), Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Practice (Palgrave, 2012) and the edited collections Affective Performance and Cognitive Science: Body, Brain and Being (Methuen, 2013) and Performing Psychologies: Imagination, Creativity and Dramas of the Mind (co-edited with Philip Barnard, 2019). I’ve been Principal Investigator for four interdisciplinary projects, funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, investigating autistic identities through creative practices (Imagining Autism, Autism Re-Imagined, Playing A/Part and Playing A/Part Online). I am currently Co-investigator for two further grants using arts based methods to research adolescent mental health: ATTUNE (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and CREATE (transdisciplinary methods and adolescent loneliness). I am also Co-Investigator for an AHRC project developing training and educational resources as interventions for online gender violence ( Understanding online misogyny: Vulnerability, Violence and In(ter)vention). I am co-editor and co-founder of Methuen’s Performance and Science series and I am a consultant on neurodiversity, working with organisations such as such as The National Theatre and Audible.