As co-lead, along with Dana Bultman, Patricia Richards, and Sharina Maíllo-Pozo, of the the Vertically Integrated Research Project, Humanities in Public Life: A Multilingual Inquiry, I am leading  the community-engaged theatre subgroup.

Under my direction, PhD students Yuliia Kabina and Edwina Kwakye-Gyamfi are training the larger group of undergraduates in embodied and theatre-based methods for community-engaged research. We are also in the process of planning a community-engaged theatre project in rural Georgia, in collaboration with community partners and other UGA units.

In March 2026, we conducted two pilot workshops, in collaboration with postdoctoral researcher Cydney Seigerman of the Social Sustainability of Agrifood Systems Lab (Department of Crop and Social Sciences), in Ellijay (Gilmer County) and Fort Valley (Peach County). These creative, participatory workshops were designed to encourage reflection, authentic expression, and dialogue among diverse producers about their perspectives on soil health and what is needed for thriving rural landscapes in Georgia. Participants included white, Black, and Native American producers of diverse commodities (vegetables, fruits, legumes, livestock, nuts, cotton, grains, and timber), who identified as both "organic" and "conventional" (often polarizing terms). Their creative expressions and structured dialogue highlighted, to quote Seigerman's report, "how soil serves as a bridge between human and more-than human thriving, playing essential roles to support life and environmental processes across its layers above and below the soil horizon." Participants reported enjoying the fun, creative approach and appreciating the opportunity to have conversations on a neutral, level playing field. The experience showed us, to paraphrase Kabina and Kwakye-Gyamfi's co-authored research presentation, how theatre can be a powerful tool for research that democratizes focus groups by removing hierarchies and making knowledge both accessible and collaborative.