Gemma Kerr is a theatre-maker and director, and a PhD candidate at Guildford School of Acting at the University of Surrey exploring performance, spatial practice and social change.

Her background is in new writing, site-responsive performance and socially engaged theatre. As a theatre-maker and director she has made work for organisations including the RSC, Liverpool Everyman, Omnibus Theatre, Greenwich + Docklands International Festival. She ran High Hearted Theatre with writer Marcelo Dos Santos, creating narrative work for unconventional theatre spaces.

Her Techne-funded PhD research seeks to investigate the possibilities of theatre and performance in exploring resistance to gentrification and displacement through the co-creation of work exploring narratives of home, with participants living through displacement and dislocation. The background to this research are the many redevelopment projects that promise to ‘revitalise’ depressed and deprived districts, bringing new housing and retail but frequently ignoring thriving existing community infrastructures.