Josephine Burton is a theatre director, playwright, dramaturg, and podcast host with deep expertise in collaborating with academics to co-create innovative and socially engaged artistic work. As co-founder of Dash Arts, she has led award-winning projects that merge academic research with creative practice, producing work that is both intellectually rigorous and widely engaging.

Recent highlights include The Great Middlemarch Mystery (Coventry City of Culture 2022), a promenade performance co-created with Professor Ruth Livesey of Royal Holloway University, reimagining George Eliot’s world through a contemporary lens, and Our Public House, a forthcoming production developed with Professor Alan Finlayson of the University of East Anglia and Professor Henriette Van Der Blom of University of Birmingham, and rooted in speechwriting workshops with communities across the UK. Josephine is also co-writing The Reckoning, shaped by research with academics at the University of Cambridge into Ukrainian history and culture.

Beyond the stage, Josephine has hosted numerous Dash Cafés and episodes of the Dash Arts Podcast, featuring academics on topics such as ancient rhetoric, protest movements, and migration studies. These platforms offer spaces for lively, accessible exchanges that connect scholarly insights to contemporary issues.

Her work exemplifies the transformative potential of integrating academic depth with creative expression, crafting theatre and artistic projects that are as insightful as they are resonant with diverse audiences.

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