Led by Dr Gertrude Cotter as Principal Investigator, this Ireland–India–Malawi partnership brought together
University College Cork
- Professor Manfred Schewe — Professor Emeritus, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, UCC; formerly Head of German and Head of Theatre.
- Dr Fionn Woodhouse — Lecturer, Department of Theatre, School of Film, Music and Theatre, UCC.
- Ms Carol Condon — Lecturer, School of Nursing and Midwifery, UCC.
- Ms. Martha Phelan — Research Systems and Reporting Officer, Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation, UCC. Discover Research at University College Cork
- Ms. Mary McNicholas — Senior Executive Administrator, BSc Medical and Health Sciences Programme, School of Medicine, UCC, at the initial stages of the research process.
Malawi and India partners
- Associate Professor Dr Chikumbutso Herbert Manthalu — Associate Professor, Department of Higher Education and Professional Development, School of Education, University of Malawi.
- Mr. Sukhesh Arora — Theatre practitioner and educator based in Berlin; collaborator with Yalgaar Sanskrutik Kala Manch, a Dalit artists’ collective in Mumbai.
- Members of Yalgaar Sanskrutik Kala Manch — Workshop participants and artistic collaborators. Their individual names are not provided for anonymity purposes.
The research explored how care, democracy and performance can strengthen active global citizenship. A report produced by the group documents the partnership and its learning, and can be downloaded here:
Report UCC Malawi India partnership 2026
The resource on this page Performing Global Justice translates that learning into practical activities for Theatre and Drama Studies and Teacher Education. Download the full PDF of the Resourc here:
Download Performing Global Justice
Below is a summary version of the full resource…
Supported by Irish Aid · September 2026
A PRAXIS teaching resource
Performing
Global Justice
From Theory to Practice
Drama, democracy and global citizenship in higher education—an accessible, critical and action-oriented resource for Theatre and Drama Studies and Teacher Education.
About the resource
Why drama and why global justice?
Global Justice Education explores how histories, political decisions, economic systems, institutions, cultures and everyday choices shape people’s lives across borders. It also asks what people can do—collectively as well as individually—to create fairer and more sustainable relationships.
Theatre is particularly well placed to engage with these questions. Global justice involves bodies, emotions, relationships, institutions, public stories and contested futures: the material of performance. Drama can slow down a situation, reveal roles and rules, place perspectives in relation and allow a group to rehearse intervention.
But drama is not automatically democratic. A lively room can still silence people. “Giving voice” can conceal who controls the frame. Role-play can turn lived oppression into someone else’s brief experience. Participation therefore requires consent, context, critical reflection and routes to responsible action.
Learning rhythm: Experience → Reflect → Question → Analyse → Connect → Imagine → Act.
The research base
The Ireland/India/Malawi partnership
The partnership explored Caring and Educating for Democracy: Performative Agency as a Key Objective of Enlightened Global Citizenship. It asked what kinds of learning help students to live, shape and defend democracy and what performance can contribute.
What the team did
- Developed a comparative macro–meso–micro framework.
- Examined democracy, care, citizenship and institutional practice at UCC and the University of Malawi.
- Held a three-day arts-based workshop in Mumbai with Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch, a Dalit cultural collective.
- Connected UCC nursing and theatre students with University of Malawi students through a hybrid workshop.
What participants valued
Participants valued time to think across disciplines and contexts. Performance condensed complex ideas, made them memorable and gave abstract questions an embodied social form.
The partnership produced several connected strands rather than one uniform study. The activities in this resource interpret and extend its learning; they should not all be described as tested by the research team.
Making the connections
Macro, meso and micro
The terms distinguish levels of social life. Their real value lies in connecting them.
Macro
Wider political and historical conditions: rights, inequality, colonial legacies, economic systems, populism and democratic backsliding—locally, nationally and globally.
Meso
The institutional level: how universities, arts organisations and curricula state and enact participation, voice, inclusion, care and civic agency.
Micro
The individual, relational and classroom level: how people listen, speak, disagree, take responsibility, participate and develop a felt capacity to act.
For educators: ask what a scene reveals about a relationship (micro), the organisation or curriculum around it (meso), and the wider histories and structures shaping both (macro).
What emerged
Five areas of key learning
1. Democracy has to be practised
It is more than a constitution, election or definition. It is also a way of relating: listening, questioning authority, allowing disagreement, recognising dignity, sharing responsibility and acting in public.
2. Context changes familiar words
“Democracy”, “citizenship”, “care” and “participation” carry different histories and lived meanings. Dialogue becomes valuable when difference is not flattened into one universal account.
3. Institutional declarations must be tested
It is not enough to find democratic language in a university strategy. We must ask where students and staff can see, feel, influence or contest those commitments.
4. Embodied learning can make relationships visible
Well-facilitated performance can make power, position, conflict and possibility available for collective inquiry. The claim is not that drama automatically creates democracy.
5. Voice is not the same as equity
Inviting everyone to speak does not itself redistribute authority, money, safety, access or editorial control. Participation must be examined through agenda-setting, resources, authorship, ownership and afterlife.
Try it in the classroom
Fifteen adaptable activities
The full resource provides ten activities for Theatre and Drama Studies and five for Teacher or Lecturer Education. Each connects embodied enquiry with evidence, reflection, power analysis and possible action.
Theatre and Drama Studies
Activities for Educators at second or third level.
From participation to equity
Working well in partnership
International and community partnerships can widen knowledge and complicate assumptions. They can also reproduce unequal patterns through funding, mobility, language, technology, workload, institutional status and control of publication.
Keep asking: are partners participating in an activity designed elsewhere, or are they shaping the knowledge, method, resources, decisions and public story of the work?
Use the complete resource
Ready to plan a class, module or partnership?
The full 18-page resource includes all 15 activities in detail, a drama-methods toolkit, a four-week undergraduate sequence, assessment options, a partnership agreement, ethical guidance, postgraduate research ideas and further reading.
Performing Global Justice
From Theory to Practice · PDF teaching resource · September 2026
Authorship, partnership and further reading
Credits
Written and compiled by Dr Gertrude Cotter, Lecturer School of Education UCC and Academic Lead of the PRAXIS Project, University College Cork.
Based on partnership research carried out by Sukhesh Arora, Carol Condon, Chikumbutso Manthalu, Martha Phelan, Manfred Schewe, Fionn Woodhouse with Theatre Studies and Nursing Studies student participants at University College Cork, studtns at the University of Malawi and participants from Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch in Mumbai.
The PRAXIS Project is funded by Irish Aid.
Selected starting points
- Andreotti, V. (2006), “Soft versus critical global citizenship education”.
- Boal, A. (2022), Games for Actors and Non-Actors, 3rd edition.
- Council of Europe: Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture.
- Oxfam Global Citizenship Guides.
- UNESCO: Global Citizenship Education—Topics and Learning Objectives.
- UCC Scenario Forum: Caring and Educating for Democracy.
- IDEA: justice-centred Global Citizenship Education resources.
- DICE: international educational drama and theatre research.
Suggested citation: Cotter, G. (2026). Performing Global Justice: From Theory to Practice. PRAXIS Project, University College Cork.