Beth Simpson (UCL) - 2025-26 Students
bethan.simpson.23@ucl.ac.uk

Refuse, reimagine, rehearse: Tracing practices of performance through anti-carceral organising in London

As the UK criminal legal system hangs in the balance of several overlapping crises, my PhD research will explore how subjects and communities made marginal by this system are imagining, and rehearsing for, future worlds grounded in healing, accountability, and justice. Collaborating with local communities, grassroots organisers, and theatre companies, the project specifically turns to contemporary London to explore practices of performance that are emerging in response to carceral injustice and violence. I will view the carceral not simply as a network of institutions, but a condition that operates through bodies, relations, subjectivities, and emotions, asking:

• How do practices of performance function as both critical and generative responses to carceral systems?
• How might the performance of alternate worlds contribute to creating the conditions for those worlds to take shape?
• What can we learn about how to transform systems of harm, and move towards life-affirming systems of justice, from the stories and experiences of directly affected communities?

Primary supervisor: Dr Rafael Schacter

CDA partner supervisor: Anna Herrmann

CDA partner: Clean Break Theatre Company