Brittney Harris

Brittney S. Harris, M.F.A., is an internationally recognized Assistant Professor of Applied Theatre in the School of Performing Arts and the Co-Director of Research for the Center for Communicating Science. Her areas of expertise are in Race and Performance, Performance as Activism, and Community-Engaged Theatre. As an artist and educator, her approach to creativity centers on providing a sacred space for discovery, exploration, and individuality.

Her creative scholarship efforts, underpinned and documented by the practices of PaR (Performance as Research), focus on the detrimental effects of vicarious trauma from social media on the personal psyche. It also examines how narrative-based storytelling can be a means for social resilience and redemption. By addressing a wide range of topics, including racial injustice, mental health awareness, gender equality, and domestic violence awareness, her work instills hope and inspiration in the process. Over the past decade, internationally and throughout the U.S. Southeast region, Brittney has devised numerous community engagement-based projects and conducted workshops rooted in the methodology of Augusto Boal's Theatre of Oppressed, Michael Rohd's Theatre for Community, Conflict, and Dialogue, and Improvisation allowing for individuals/communities to take on issues that identify cultural similarities and indifferences within an innovative activism framework for community and solo-based works.

Her creative research has been featured at several international interdisciplinary conferences and fringe festivals, including the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference (ATHE), Northeast Modern Language Association Conference (NeMLA), Global Conference on Women and Gender, Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), and Black Theatre Network. In 2023, she was selected as a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Higher Education Faculty Fellow focusing on 'Preserving and Transmitting American Ensemble-Based Devised Theatre,' and completed research abroad in Rwanda, Africa, working with the youth population of Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village highlighting the importance of theatre for community-based healing, creative wellness, and equity.

Harris holds a Master of Fine Arts in Acting degree with an emphasis in Cultural Enrichment from the University of Georgia and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Acting and Theatre Performance with a minor in Communications from Old Dominion University.