I’m Ben, a senior lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance. I’ve just stepped into the PGR Convenor role for Drama. 

2.) How did you get here? What was your journey to becoming a Senior Lecturer in Performance and PGR Convenor in Drama? 

I did a degree in English & Theatre Studies at Warwick, then trained as a theatre director at Birkbeck. The Birkbeck MFA provided lots of networking opportunities which jumpstarted my freelance career as an assistant director. This was an adventurous lifestyle – taking me to Manchester, London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and even Japan – but a financially precarious one! After five years, I craved stability and I missed research. I felt that my passion might be for writing about directing rather than doing it, and so I returned to Warwick for my PhD in 2011. I joined Sussex in 2015 as a Teaching Fellow in Drama on a temporary contract. The following Spring, the department advertised two permanent lectureships, so I applied and got one. I was incredibly lucky that the right posts came up at the right time.   

3.) What were the biggest challenges you encountered on that journey? 

During my studies: financial! I was very lucky to have AHRC funding but had no savings. When I did my PhD, there was no limit on graduate teaching, so I did loads of it across different institutions to keep up with rent. Contracts were always late, and payments never reliable, which caused huge stress. The prep time was a big distraction from writing, and in the summers, I remember marking massive piles of hard-to-decipher handwritten exam scripts, for which I was paid a small amount per script, feeling grateful and exploited. 

4.) How did you choose your PhD topic, and why did you choose it?  

I had a unique vantage point from which to write about directorial processes and practices because I’d sat in many rehearsal rooms. I also had access to practitioners and institutions that I wanted to analyse in my research. I focused on two directors whose work I’d followed since I was a teenager: Katie Mitchell and Thomas Ostermeier. I ended up sitting in on a lot of Mitchell’s work, and that half of my PhD became my first book. 

5.) What personal, academic, or professional project are you working on at the moment? 

My research and my personal life have become more entwined: I’m now working on a book project that blends memoir, Carl Jung’s analytical psychology, and a study of eight queer artists who use theatre to explore marginalisation. I’m seeing their work through the lens of queer heroism, thinking about theatre’s therapeutic capacity for healing, transformation, and political coalition building. 

6.) What do you love about your work? And what do you hate about it? 

I love the freedom and autonomy. I’m grateful that I can decide where to invest my time and energy. I love reading and lifelong learning. I love being in contact with students and emerging researchers who teach me about their worlds, their outlooks, and the questions that matter. I hate constantly changing bureaucratic and administrative systems and the broken funding model. 

7.) What does a typical week look like for you? 

This varies, which is part of the pleasure and interest. It might involve a combination of seminar and workshop teaching, supervisions, student hours, attending a committee or departmental meeting, a theatre trip with students, some external examining duty for another institution (reading student work and feeding back on colleagues’ marking and assessment processes), reading for research, and writing (normally outside of term time).  

 8.) Tell us about life outside of work. How do you spend your time? 

 I do weightlifting, which, for me, is a form of active meditation. It also compensates for the desk-bound day job. I sing with the Brighton Gay Men’s Chorus and go to a lot of gigs and music festivals.  

 9.) What’s your one best piece of advice for PGRs? 

Imposter syndrome is real – it’s very common, and I still feel it! But I remind myself not to fear mistakes and failures; they have taught me many valuable things. I’d also say: find the people and pursuits beyond the PhD that ground you and remind you of your inherent worth. 

10.) Who’s next? Nominate a staff member outside of your department to be our next guest interviewee! 

Lynne Murphy, Michael Lawrence  

Interview by Ariel Li, PGR in Media and Communications