The Department of Drama and Film in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures is saddened to hear of the recent passing of Professor David Mayer, Emeritus and Honorary Research Professor and a foundational member of the Drama department.

Having spent a brief term as Lecturer at the University of Bristol and in the English department at Warwick University, David came to the University of Manchester in 1972. 

He retired in 1996 but continued to lecture across Europe and the US as well as authoring key academic works on theatre, performance and on early film and screen cultures. 

David was co-editor of Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film from 2002 to 2008. He was Head of Department from 1991 to 1994 and was the recipient of numerous research grants and awards, receiving the Distinguished Scholar Award, from the American Society for Theatre Research, in 2012.

David’s enthusiasm for and scholarly expertise in early cinema history and practice shaped the original film teaching and research in the Department, as well as the international academic debates on early cinema and its relation to our understanding of theatre and performance, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century in Europe and the US. 

An avid collector of theatre and film memorabilia, David and his wife Helen Day-Mayer gave generous philanthropic donations to the John Rylands Special Collections at the University of Manchester, as well as to other archives and film related festivals across the globe. 

David was a formidable intellectual, with an acute critical eye and acerbic wit, and he is remembered by those he taught and those whose research he supervised, as a generous, thoughtful and inspiring teacher, and an original and international agenda-setting academic. He will be greatly missed by those knew him at the University of Manchester and by the international scholarly community more widely. 

Who Ya Gonna Call? is part of the UK Climate Resilience programme, developed in association with the Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission (YHCC).

This warm and welcoming one-hour performance gives the audience plenty to think about, and even invites the adventurous to help out directly. After all, nobody can act alone on the climate change, so this one-man show might sometimes need a little help. 

Audiences can see the show for themselves at the Martin Harris Centre at The University of Manchester on 8 March 2023, and will ‘tour’ other spaces in due course. 

Who Ya Gonna Call? has been designed to work flexibly in theatre spaces, community halls, or office settings and is the first presentation by Vesper Hill, a new social enterprise co-founded by Scott-Bottoms, which uses storytelling, performances and workshops to explore the human and mental health dimensions of our environmental crisis. 

 “Are we prepared for climate change?,” Scott-Bottoms asks. “Researching this piece, I was really struck by the fact that the people we’ve tasked with sorting this out are few and far between. And they feel pretty overwhelmed by it all. With Who Ya Gonna Call?, I want to tell some of their stories -- and to encourage audiences to see that we all have a role to play, in facing the future.”

To find out more about the upcoming performance of Who Ya Gonna Call? at The Martin Harris Centre and to register to attend,

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Vesper Hill is a new social enterprise, founded in 2022. We aim to use interactive storytelling, performances and workshops to explore the human and mental health dimensions of our environmental crisis, and to build capacity and resilience in organisations and communities.

We offer a variety of performances and workshop programmes for different contexts. We can also be commissioned to make new work, tailored specifically to your needs. info@vesperhill.org

Storyteller Steve Scott-Bottoms is the co-founder of Vesper Hill, and co-chair of YHCC’s Adaptation and Resilience panel. He researched this performance by interviewing other panel members, from a range of professional backgrounds. In his day job, he is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at The University of Manchester. In addition to being the author of several books, Steve is a theatre director, writer, performer and facilitator. 

Simon Brewis (director and co-deviser) is a theatre director and dramaturg who specialises in working with young people and community groups. He is the artistic director of Common Chorus Theatre Company.

Hosted by The University of Manchester’s Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, Notes on Bresson is a conference organised in partnership with Richmond, The American University in London (RAIUL) and the UK Bressonian Practice-Based Research Group. 

This open and friendly event has been curated to include presentations from thought leaders in cinema, lively panel discussions and intimate screenings, as well as plenty of networking opportunities here in the creative capital of the North of England. The conference encourages participation and debate, ensuring every delegate goes home with a fresh perspective on the great French filmmaker and a wider network. 

Jonathan Hourigan, assistant to Robert Bresson on ��’A������Գ�, Lecturer in Screenwriting at University of Manchester and co-chair of the conference, says “It’s a great thrill to bring together so many scholars and experts on Bresson, along with filmmakers and artists influenced by him and to explore and celebrate his work in such depth.”

Tickets and more information about this event  at  and the event warmly welcomes postgraduate students of film studies, French studies and philosophy, in addition to academics, cineastes, filmmakers, artists and afficionados of Bresson and French cinema. 

A recent graduate of the Department of Drama and a current MA Playwriting student have recently taken home prestigious industry awards.

Kwame Owusu has taken home the coveted Mustapha Matura award, which is part of the  for his play Dreaming and Drowning.

“I am absolutely thrilled to be awarded the Mustapha Matura Award and Mentoring Programme,” said Kwame. “It is such an honour to be given this rare and generous opportunity to receive mentorship from a world-class playwright, alongside the championing of my writing that this award bestows. I’m incredibly excited to sharpen my writing technique over this mentorship period, and to expand my approach to storytelling and form with increasing boldness, ambition, and precision. This is a life-changing moment for me, and I feel genuinely delighted and galvanised for the future.”

Misha Duncan-Barry, a current MA Playwriting student at The University of Manchester, is also celebrating her Out for her performance in My Voice Was Heard But It Was Ignored (Red Ladder Theatre Company UK Tour).

Duncan-Barry’s recent theatre credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream at HOME and Killing Christmas Eve at Oldham Coliseum.

Image credit: 

The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has awarded researchers at The University of Manchester funding to partner with local communities to tackle health inequalities across the UK.

The award comes as part of a new wave of research projects announced to investigate the role of community assets such as parks and galleries in improving health outcomes. The projects are funded as part of the second phase of the £26 million, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Mobilising Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities investment. This multi-year research programme is funded primarily by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and aims to use existing local resources to create a fairer and healthier society.

Building on previous success; 
The first phase of the programme was and funded projects which looked at how to scale up small, local approaches to tackle health inequalities. This second phase is a consortia-building phase, which will fund 16 projects up to £250,000 each to facilitate cross-partner collaboration, incorporating relevant non-academic partners, including community groups and health system organisations. 

These consortia will conduct new research and develop community asset hubs with the aim of coordinating large-scale projects for their communities as part of the final phase of the programme to be launched in 2023.

Organisations of Hope, led by Principal Investigator, , explores how creativity, culture and heritage address inequities in Greater 91ֱ��, with an initial focus on mental health and dementia.  It will build a creative health coalition in Greater 91ֱ�� from a diverse group of organisations and individuals that represent communities, cultural organisations, charities, health and care providers and local government. The partners will work together to understand how existing creative health assets can improve health and wellbeing and increase equity by tackling the social determinants of health. 

The initial group includes researchers from The University of Manchester and King’s College London; key staff from the Greater 91ֱ�� Integrated Care Partnership, its flagship organisation Dementia United and the Greater 91ֱ�� Combined Authority; as well as charities who work with communities like Cartwheel Arts, Action Together and 42nd Street.

For more information, please contact: simon.parry@manchester.ac.uk

Anne Williams, fought for justice for the 97 victims who were unlawfully killed in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster - including her son Kevin. After refusing to accept the coroner's original verdict of accidental death, the real-life drama tells the story of her determination to unearth the truth about what really happened. 

Peake remembers seeing Williams campaigning on the news, the image of a bereaved mother who would not back down, and took up the first opportunity to play Williams on screen.

Anne aired on ITV on 6 January and all episodes are available for catch-up on .

In 2020, Maxine Peake became an Honorary Professor of Literature and Performance at The University of Manchester. As part of her role, she is an ambassador for  and continues to work collaboratively with students and academics. 

If you would like to catch up on Maxine in conversation with Professor John McAuliffe, celebrating both her appointment at The University of Manchester and International Women’s Day 2021, you can do so via the .

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Researchers at the School of Arts, Languages and Culture were awarded a small grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Impact Acceleration Account to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on artists working in community and socially engaged art.

Dr Alison Jeffers and Dr MaoHui Deng, both lecturers in the School’s Drama department, facilitated conversations between artists which took place over Zoom. The conversations were then edited into eight short films now available to watch online.

Drs Jeffers and Deng said, “We think that the conversations capture some of the very mixed thoughts and emotions about what was going on in the middle of the pandemic. We’re interested in your responses and whether you think there’s anything that can be taken away from the experiences of artists and communities as we seem to be emerging from the worst aspects of the disease and from lockdown more generally. We’d be very happy to hear your feedback on these conversations and we’d love to know whether you will use them maybe in teaching, workshops or other settings. This is important to us because we really want to know what impact they might have had on your practice or your thinking.”

You can send feedback via the site below or email directly to or

Watch the videos and find out more about the project here: