Bio:

Ruth Hellier, PhD, is a scholar, creative artist and performer, whose work engages in interdisciplinary ways with the areas of performance studies, critical and interdisciplinary music, dance and theatre studies; community arts; cultural history; critical memory/heritage studies; and Mexican and Latin American studies. Her research and creative projects explore issues of identity, memory and history; power relations; tourism; embodiment; experimentalisms; vocality; ecologies and environmental issues; and the ethics in/of performance and research.

Publications include Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism, and Performance (OUP); chapters in Performance, Embodiment and Cultural Memory, and Music, Power and Politics; articles in Performance Research and Research in Drama Education; an edited collection, Women Singers in Global Contexts (University of Illinois Press) and Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico (Intellect & University of Chicago Press). She was Editor of the journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos (2015–2020).

She holds BA Hons in Music, Drama and Dance, PGCE in Drama in Education; and PhD in Performance Studies and Critical Dance Studies. Ruth had a successful career as a professional stage and TV actor, and also worked as a community arts facilitator, and Head of Music in secondary education. In the field of arts and disability, she directed the InterAct Theatre Workshop.