Niamh Dowling

Niamh Dowling is RADA's Principal. Previously Niamh was the Head of Postgraduate School of Performance, Design and Technical Arts at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in London where, since 2013, she developed a suite of innovative postgraduate programmes in the UK and with international partners: with arthaus.berlin and with National Theater Institute at Eugene O'Neill Centre in Connecticut. Prior to this she was Head of School of Theatre at Manchester Metropolitan University where she developed an international MA programme which ran in Wroclaw, Poland, with Song of the Goat.

Niamh has taught internationally as a Movement Director in the USA, Asia, Central and South America, and Russia working on projects and productions in USA, Hong Kong, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uzbekistan and Ukraine with longer term British Council projects in Africa and Singapore. Recent work for the British Council has included a four year project with TAFU in Tbilisi, Georgia and leading an ongoing acting and technical training programme at University of Arts and Culture in Uzbekistan.

Brought up in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, Niamh’s first passion was mountaineering and her first work was as a mountain leader. With a BA from University of Wales and an MA from Goldsmiths College, Niamh trained with Monika Pagneux in Paris, Nancy Topf and Eva Karczag in New York and as a teacher of Alexander Technique. She has developed a unique approach to working with a range of performers, technicians, designers, directors, writers and managers for which she has been selected as one of the practitioners on the online Routledge Performance Archive. Niamh’s movement practice is underpinned by principles of Alexander Technique and Systemic Constellations and is shaped by metaphor. Over the past ten years she has been training in systemic approaches to leadership which has influenced her more recent practice research in the articulation of an inclusive and liberatory approach to both performance, design and technical training.

Niamh is on the executive of the Federation of Drama Schools and on the Editorial board of Taylor and Francis Journal: Theatre Dance Performance Training.