Hasan Akbulut is a professor in İstanbul University, Faculty of Communication, Department of Radi TV and Cinema in Turkey. He studies on cinema, drama in education and critical media literacy. His Ph.D. dissertation focused upon representation of the women in Turkish melodramas (2003). He is a founding member of sinecine: journal of film studies. He teaches film analysis, cinematogrphy, visual culture, cinema and cultural identity. He is currently studying on cinemagoing in Turkey as a project. He is the author of Nuri Bilge Ceylan Sinemasını Okumak: Anlatı, Zaman, Mekan (2005), Kadına Melodram Yakışır: Türk Melodram Sinemasında Kadın İmgesi (İstanbul: Bağlam, 2008) and Yumurta: Ruha Yolculuk (with S. Büker, Ankara: Dipnot, 2009). He has published numerous articles on cinema, drama in education, and critical media literacy.
After graduating from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Pauline Cooney gained a postgraduate certificate in drama education from the University of Strathclyde. As a drama practitioner she began to research ways of implementing rich and innovative approaches to deliver the drama curriculum within both primary and secondary sectors. As a result of this, she was asked to contribute to the postgraduate drama secondary, undergraduate primary and community arts programmes at the University of Strathclyde. For the last five years she has been working in the School of Education at University of Glasgow as an Associate Tutor.
Dr. Andrew Killen was based in primary school education in Glasgow between 2001 and 2013. His undergraduate degree from the University of Glasgow specialised in drama and his Doctorate thesis was on Democracy for Children in an Urban School. Primary school experience includes the positions of principal and acting headteacher roles (2006-2013). His Higher Education experience includes the University of Glasgow (School of Education) from 2013-2015. Since 2015 he has worked at University of the West of Scotland (School of Education). Teaching responsibilities include mathematics, science and drama. He is Depute B.A Programme Leader. Research interests include drama, science and democracy.
Phil Kingston is the Community and Education Manager of the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre. He holds a BA in Philosophy from King’s College London and a Diploma in Acting from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. After a career as an actor and writer he spent ten years running a TIE and INSET company in northern England. He took up full time work in applied drama and arts management in 2011.
Dr Carmel O’Sullivan is the Head of the School of Education in Trinity College Dublin. She is the Director of the Arts Education Research Group in Trinity College and her research focuses on the arts in education in formal and non-formal educational settings. She has particular interests in the areas of early childhood arts education and the role of drama and theatre with young people with autism spectrum disorder.
Heidi Schoenenberger holds a Bachelor of Science in Educational Theatre from New York University and has recently completed her Master’s in Education at Trinity College Dublin with a focus in Drama in Education. She is interested in connecting young people and teachers to the arts through watching, participating, and creating.
Ruken Akar Vural is an associate professor in Adnan Menderes University, Faculty of Education, Department of Curriculum and Instruction in Turkey. Her primary areas of scholarship are drama in education, curriculum development and evaluation for elementary schools, enhancing learning and teaching in elementary stage as well. She focused on Dorothy Heathcote’s Mantle of the Expert (MoE) approach to teaching Turkish in primary school settings on her MA thesis and the relationships between Bertolt Brechts’ didactic plays and critical thinking dispositions in her doctorate thesis. She has worked in a variety of educational settings in Turkey and abroad. She is pursuing a number of studies in drama in education (DIE), and humanising curriculum, ability grouping, and discrimination. She has been supervised by John W. Somers, David Davis, and Ken Taylor in UK. She is a member of National Drama- UK, and Turkish Curriculum and Instruction Association.
