Presenter - Professor Sue Jennings

Professor Sue Jennings PhD is an anthropologist, therapist, performer, and author. She is Senior Research Fellow, The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham

Distinguished Scholar, University of the Witwatersrand, Honorary Fellow of the University of Roehampton, and Professor of Play - awarded by the European Federation of Dramatherapy. She has been a pioneer of Dramatherapy and Play Therapy in the UK and overseas.

Professor Jennings' paradigm ‘embodiment-projection-role’ is integrated into education and therapy world-wide. Having worked as a clinician in psychiatry, forensic settings and special education, she has focussed her recent practice and research on early years development and developed ‘Neuro-Dramatic-Play’ as a basis for attachment and empathy.

She emphasises the importance of ‘play from conception’ for healthy emotional and social growth. Her doctoral fieldwork was with a tribal community in the Malaysian rain forest, which she believes underpins all her childhood theory and therapy. Sue is a prolific author with over fifty publications on theory and application to her name. She believes passionately in ‘playing for peace’ with a rule of ‘no guns in the playroom’.