Profile

I hold all my degrees from the University of Manchester, and have since taught at the University of Leeds since 1994.

However, over the past four decades I have spent large amounts of time teaching, training, researching, making theatre, writing and working on projects, mostly in East Africa – though also in the UK and India. I have lived and worked in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, The Gambia, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

I am fascinated by the performance cultures of the Global South, many of which are grossly under-researched, especially when making work in local languages – which is in fact by far the most impactful work. Over the past decade I have focused on durational, responsive, community-based applied arts practices in Kenya and Uganda, working long term with the same deprived communiuties and with teams of local facilitator artists over a number of years.

Research interests

Research Interests 

I am primarily an Africanist with special interests in African theatre, African literature, education, development studies and politics. I am also concerned with women's studies in Africa and worldwide with Theatre for Development. I have particularly strong links with East Africa and the Horn of Africa; especially Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda, in all of which I have worked in recent years. I also work as a theatre director, usually but not exclusively in the area of African theatre, and teach across a range of courses dealing with contemporary theatrical practice. 

I am currently engaged with a number of projects. My co-edited book, with Katie McQuaid,  Community-based arts, research and activism in Uganda: We Are Walukuba, is being published by Methuen in April 2025. It discusses, using community and local facilitator voices, as well as art-works, poetry and playscripts, seven years of arts-based community engagement in a single, deprived area of Jinja city. I am also publishing with Cambridge University Press a short monograph, Somali Musical Theatre, due to come out in 2026.

I am currently running a major 3-year AHRC funded project, ‘Communication and Creativity’. This is working in the UK, Kenya and Uganda, seeking to understand barriers to good communication in deprived communities, what communities can do themselves to engage with and address these issues, and how creativity can intersect to support good communication.

Research Students 

I supervise a wide range of PhD students; many of whom are usually international. My central focus is on African arts and literature, but i also supervise quite a lot of other Applied Arts projects. Many of my students are working on Practice as Research PhDs. I am happy to discuss ideas with prospective students.

Recent Publications

Plastow, Jane, 2024, ‘Speaking to Power: Speaking to People: responsive practice in relation to maternity issues in western Kenya’, in A Mermikides and A Bouchard (eds), Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine, London: Routledge

Plastow, Jane, 2023, Kisumu: The Radical Homeland for Kenya's Applied Theatre movement, in Jahazi 11(1), 40-44

Mubangizi, Vincent; Plastow, Jane; Nakaggwa, Florence; et al, 2022, ‘Assessing changes in knowledge, attitudes, and intentions to use family planning after watching documentary and drama health education films: a qualitative study’, Reproductive Health, 19, 65. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12978-022-01370-5

Plastow, Jane, 2021, ‘Speaking to Power: The Problem of Enabling Subaltern Voices to Be Heard. A Case Study Concerned with Using the Arts to Engage with the Issue of Maternal Mortality in Western Kenya, Social Sciences, 10(12), 471; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10120471

Anna Madill, Netalie Shloim, Brian Brown, Siobhan Hugh-Jones, Jane Plastow, Diana Setiyawat, 2021, ‘Mainstreaming Global Mental Health: Is there potential to embed psychosocial well-being impact in all global challenges research?’, Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, DOI: 10.1111/aphw.12335

Plastow, Jane, 2021, A History of East African Theatre, Vol 2, Central East Africa, Palgrave Macmillan

Plastow, Jane, 2020, A History of East African Theatre, Vol 1 The Horn of Africa, Palgrave Macmillan

Jane Plastow and Matthew Elliott, 2020, ‘’Translating ‘good’ pregnancy in rural Nyanza; Kenya’, Moving Worlds, 20:1. 83-96

Plastow, Jane, Paul Cooke and Simon Peter Otieno, 2019, ‘Challenging the Message of the Medium: Scaling Participatory Arts Projects and the Creativity Agenda in Kenya’, in Cooke, P & Ines Soria-Donlan, Participatory Arts in International Development, Oxford: Routledge

Plastow, Jane, 2019, ‘The Politics of African Shakespeare’, in Editors: Jacobson M, Iyengar S, The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation. Routledge, 171-180

Plastow, Jane, 2018, ‘Fear and Trepidation in Asmara: Meeting Ngugi’, in Editors, Simon Gikandi and N Wachanga, Ngugi: Reflections on his Life of Writing, Boydell & Brewer, 91-96

McQuaid, K. and J. Plastow, 2017, ‘From Research to Activism: Making Theatre and Anthropology in Walukuba’, Uganda. Critical Stages: The International Association of Theatre Critics Journal, Special Issue on Contemporary African Drama and Theatre (Eds. F. Osofisan and T. Olaniyan). http://www.critical-stages.org/15/uganda-from-research-to-activism-theatre-and-anthropology-in-walukuba/

McQuaid, K. and J. Plastow, 2017, ‘Ethnography, Applied Theatre and Stiwanism: Creative Methods in Search of Praxis Amongst Men and Women in Jinja, Uganda, Journal of International Development, 961-980

Plastow, Jane and Martin Banham, eds, 2016, Six Plays from East and West Africa, Boydell & Brewer.

Selected Recent Creative Outputs

1. 2025. Co-deviser with Lillian Mbabazi. Chantal and the Evil Ssenga. Promenade production with youth from Walukuba/Masese.

2. 2022. Writer/director. The Fall of Dembe Village. Musical theatre performance taken to 36 schools in Jinja City discussing causes of problems with trust and kindness within communities. Video available on request.

3. 2020. Originator and writer, I Just Wanted To Ask. 6 part-radio series aired twice in Uganda. Drama focusing on the need for parental support to help young people avoid teenage pregnancy.

4. 2019. Writer. Nyanza Stories. Radio series of short monologues for local radio in Kisumu, Kenya, discussing attitudes to family relations and pregnancy.

5. 2019. Executive producer, Sunset at Dawn, 35 minute documentary on maternal mortality for Kenyan TV. Video available on request.

6. 2018. Writer/director. Short drama film (8 minutes) discussing fears in relation to using contraception among communities in Uganda. (Two versions in the languages of Lusoga and Kirundi.)

7. 2018. Originator, writer/director, Three Women, play based on real life experiences of Kenyan women giving birth in government health facilities. Produced for high-level forum on maternal mortality in Kisumu, Kenya.

8. 2017. Writer and director. The Singing Forest, Community play regarding deforestation made in Domasi, Malawi.

• Maternal mortality in East Africa

Research groups and institutes

• Literary studies