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Dr Kelly Jordan joined Â鶹Íø in 2006 and currently serves as a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Drama, Theatre Arts, and Acting. She is also an accomplished playwright, director, and performance maker, with formal training from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Kelly leads and teaches across multiple modules within the Drama and Acting programmes, specialising in Acting, Performance Making, Writing for Performance, Directing, Live Art, Audience Engagement, Immersive and Participatory Practices, as well as Performance Theory and Philosophy. She supervises and examines both written and Practice-as-Research projects at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her academic experience includes serving as an External Examiner at institutions such as Middlesex University and the University of East London.

A published author with a strong national and international profile, Kelly’s research focuses on Participatory Practices and Live Art, with her work featured in leading scholarly journals and edited volumes. Most recently, she contributed several chapters to the landmark publication The Phenomenology of Blood in Performance Art (2025), edited by T. J. Bacon and Chelsea Coon. Her contributions include a co-authored conversational piece between world-leading artists ORLAN and Marina Abramović. She has also collaborated with the US-based performance collective Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s La Pocha Nostra.

Kelly’s creative practice includes writing and directing original plays and performances at venues such as Hoxton Hall, Ministry of Sound, and Picturehouse Cinema (Piccadilly, London). Her most recent play, Spinners (2024), was showcased at multiple local theatres and festivals—including Curve, Upstairs at the Western, and Â鶹Íø’s Cultural Exchanges—culminating in sold-out performances at the Y Theatre, Leicester. Based on true accounts, Spinners explores the cultural intersections of 1970s Northern Soul and 1990s Clubbing, and the pivotal role Leicester played in both movements.

Drama Research Group (DRG)

Institute of Arts, Design and Performance

• Jordan, K. (2025) ‘Being Shattered: Fragility and Our Psychogenesis’, in Bacon, T. J. and Coon, C. (eds.) The Phenomenology of Blood in Performance Art. London: Routledge. pp. 105-121.
• Bacon, T. J. and Jordan, K. (2025) ‘In Conversation: ORLAN and Marina Abramović', in Bacon, T.J. and Coon, C. (eds.) The Phenomenology of Blood in Performance Art. London: Routledge. pp. 122-129.

• Live Art
• Immersive, Interactive, Participatory Practices
• Contemporary Theatre Practice
• Directing
• Writing for Performance
• Philosophy and Performance

• Live Art
• Directing
• Acting
• Immersive, Interactive, Participatory Practices
• Contemporary Theatre Practice

• PhD in Drama and Performance at Â鶹Íø
• Certificate in Further Education Teaching – City & Guilds 7407 at Brooksby Melton College, Leicestershire
• MA in Performance Studies (with Distinction) at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
• BA (Hons) in Drama and Theatre Studies at St Mary’s University College, awarded by the University of Surrey

Undergraduate Modules:

Live Art (Drama and Theatre Arts)

Body, Voice, Text (Drama and Theatre Arts)

Performance Festival 1 (Acting)

Final Research Projects (Drama and Theatre Arts)

Estelle Papadimitriou, PhD, From the interstices: contemporary performative practice and (in)betweenness, 2nd Supervisor. 

David Hughes, PhD, Liminality and Performance: Embodied Encounters at the intersection of ancient theatrical treatise and Extended Reality Technologies (XR), 1^st Supervisor. 

Fernanda Prata, PhD in Performance Practice (awarded Â鶹Íø Graduate Full Bursary), The Dancer Training Within an Integrative Approach: A Transpractice Methodology Towards the UK Dance Conservatoire, 2nd Supervisor.

Jason Benson, PhD in Contemporary Performance Practices, PhD in Volcano’s Theatre of Shudder: An Aesthetic Analysis, 2nd Supervisor.

Book Chapter  - Jordan, K. (2025) ‘Being Shattered: Fragility and Our Psychogenesis’, in Bacon, T. J. and Coon, C. (eds.) The Phenomenology of Blood in Performance Art. London: Routledge. pp. 105-121. 

Book Chapter  - Bacon, T. J. and Jordan, K. (2025) ‘In Conversation: ORLAN and Marina Abramović', in Bacon, T.J. and Coon, C. (eds.) The Phenomenology of Blood in Performance Art. London: Routledge. pp. 122-129.

Journal Article  - The Ethics of Participation and Participation Gone Wrong. Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 7.2, Nov 2019

Conference Paper - The Ethics of Participation and Participation Gone Wrong (extended version). Borderlines  VI, Â鶹Íø, Thursday 21 June 2018

Conference Paper - The Ethics of Participation and Participation Gone Wrong. Critical Care: Audience in Interactive, Immersive and One on One Performance. London South Bank University, Thursday 29 March 2018

Journal Article  - Jordan, K. (2016) On the Border of Participation: Spectatorship and the Interactive Rituals of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra. Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, 4 (1), pp. 104-118

Impact event  - Co-director on a 1960s Immersive Cinema project in collaboration with Dr Alissa Clarke and CATHI and Picturehouse Cinemas, Piccadilly, London, July 2016

Impact Event Collaborator and co-director on a 1960s Immersive Cinema project in collaboration with Dr Alissa Clarke and CATHI and Phoenix Cinema, Leicester, March 2016

Impact Event  - ‘In Conversation’ with Lois Keidan (Director of the Live Art Development Agency). Cultural Exchanges, Â鶹Íø, March 2016           

Conference Paper  - On the Border of Participation: Spectatorship and the Interactive Rituals of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra. German Society for Contemporary Drama in English (CDE) 24th Annual Conference on “Theatre and Spectatorship”, hosted in Barcelona, June 2015

Conference Paper - Border Politics: Audience Participation. Borderlines: Performances, Disciplines, Dialogues, Â鶹Íø, June 2014

Workshop  - ‘Crossing Borders: The Radical Pedagogy of Guillermo Gómez-Pena’s La Pocha Nostra’ at the IUTA 8th World Congress on Theatre and Pedagogy, Â鶹Íø, 28 June – Friday 2 July 2010

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