John Matthews

Academic profile

Dr John Matthews

Interim Head of School
School of Society and Culture (Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business)

The Global Goals

In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. John's work contributes towards the following SDG(s):

Goal 04: SDG 4 - Quality EducationGoal 13: SDG 13 - Climate Action

About John

John is a leading researcher in the field of performance training and at the forefront of developing new theorisation and approaches to using emergent technology in training practice. Alongside three critically-acclaimed monographs John's most recent publications in major journals in the field innovate new use-cases for virtual and immersive technology and provide novel philosophical frameworks for evaluating and developing these. Known for applying new methodological approaches, John's two forthcoming monographs use creative computational methods to analyse the largest digitised database of critical literature in the field giving access to forms of knowledge not available in the field before. 

The inaugural Research Fellow of the Stanislavski Centre and  a recipient of an AHRC Leadership Fellowship, John has led research projects and teams with diverse stakeholders and partners including Theatre Royal Plymouth and Bloomsbury Publishing house. Through radio broadcast, online essays and guides as well as in public lectures John engages diverse audiences in cutting edge research. Still an active performer, John's first professional role was in BBC Film Drama while still a schoolboy in South Wales and his most recent parts have been on BBC Radio. 

Teaching


John is currently supervising PhDs in the areas of acting, training, embodiment, disability and emergent technology in training practices.