Kathleen Gallagher

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Distinguished Professor, Gallagher studies theatre as a powerful medium for expression by young people of their experiences and understandings. She has published 4 monographs and 6 edited collections, In Defence of Theatre (UTP 2016); Drama and Theatre in Urban Contexts (Routledge 2013); The Methodological Dilemma (Routledge 2008/2018); How Theatre Educates (UTP 2003), 46 book chapters and 47 refereed articles at the intersection of youth, theatre, and the social world in journals such as Research in Drama Education; Theatre and Performance Studies; Theatre Research in Canada; Canadian Theatre Review; Pedagogy, Culture and Society; Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies; Ethnography and Education; Journal of Aesthetic Education, in addition to various creative writing and documentary film and audio projects. Her most recent co-edited collection, Global Youth Citizenry and Radical Hope: Enacting Community-Engaged Research through Performative Methodologies (Springer 2020) and her forthcoming monograph, Hope in a Collapsing World: Youth, Theatre, and Listening as a Political Alternative (UTP) are based on her recently completed collaborative ethnography on young people’s theatre-making and care-taking practices in Canada, India, Taiwan, Greece, and England. This project also produced Towards Youth: a play on radical hope, a Verbatim play by collaborator Andrew Kushnir, which premiered at Crow’s Theatre in 2019 and Finding Radical Hope, a documentary film screened at Crow’s Theatre in 2020. Previous award-winning books include: Why Theatre Matters (UTP, 2014); The Theatre of Urban (UTP, 2007) Drama Education in the Lives of Girls (UTP, 2000). Previously a Canada Research Chair, and a Salzburg Seminar Fellow, in 2017 Gallagher won the inaugural University of Toronto President’s Impact Award for research impact beyond the academy. In 2018 she won the David E. Hunt Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and has garnered over 7 million dollars in SSHRC, Canada Foundation for Innovation, and other research funding. Gallagher’s current SSHRC project is a five-year, multi-sited ethnography, Global Youth (Digital) Citizen-Artists and their Publics: Performing for Socio-Ecological Justice in which she is looking at youth theatre practices and youth activism on climate justice. Please visit dramaresearch.ca.

Note: The following list reflects Professor Gallagher’s most recent publications.