Jon Catherwood-Ginn

Jon Catherwood-Ginn serves as an assistant professor of applied theatre in the School of Performing Arts and co-director of research for the Center for Communicating Science. Prior to his most recent appointment, he facilitated community engagement and educational programs with internationally acclaimed artists as associate director of programming at the Moss Arts Center at Virginia Tech (VT).

As an applied theatre artist and educator, Catherwood-Ginn has worked in health care, juvenile justice, secondary and higher education, and regional planning, among other sectors. Organizations that have hosted him as a consultant, performer, facilitator, and reviewer include the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP), Center for Computational and Integrative Biology at Rutgers University-Camden, Intercultural Leadership Institute, New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Pennsylvania Humanities Council, Sojourn Theatre, The TEAM, Lost Nation Theatre, Hamilton-Gibson Productions, Extant Arts Company, and Aquila Theatre. His work at the intersection of applied theatre, intercultural engagement, and democratic dialogue has been featured at conferences hosted by the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, APAP, Association of American Colleges & Universities, Engagement Scholarship Consortium, Imagining America, International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, Network of Ensemble Theaters, and Social Theory, Politics, and the Arts.

He served as executive editor of the journal Community Change (Virginia Tech Publishing) from 2021-2024. His writings on applied arts in civic visioning have been published in Animating Democracy's "A Working Guide to the Landscape of Arts for Change" series and Arts and Community Change: Exploring Cultural Development Policies, Practices and Dilemmas (Routledge Press, 2015). 

Past honors have included membership in the inaugural cohort in APAP’s Leadership Fellows Program and a Building Bridges grant award from the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, among others. 

Catherwood-Ginn received a B.A. with Honors from Bucknell University and M.F.A. from Virginia Tech in Directing and Public Dialogue. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Planning, Governance, & Globalization through the School of Public and International Affairs at VT, focusing his research on representation among community stakeholders in the work of private foundations.