Mentors and Guest Speakers

During their participation, they not only act as lecturers but also as true mentors as they engage in one-on-one discussions with the participants. They are present for multiple days, some for the whole period of the training. They allow participants an honest and open insight into their careers, including both success stories and failures.

Members of the Alumni community of The Festival Academy are also invited to join the Atelier and take initiative leading sessions and involving professionals from their own networks (find out more about our Alumni-led sessions here).

You can have a look at the list of experts present during previous editions here.

You can find a list of the experts for Atelier Nicosia below.

Mike van Graan served in leadership positions in a variety of anti-apartheid cultural organisations such as the Congress of South African Writers and the Community Arts Project. After South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, he was appointed as a Special Adviser to the new Minister responsible for Arts and Culture where he played an influential role in shaping post-apartheid cultural policies. He was the founding Secretary General of Arterial Network, a pan-African network of creatives and activists, and served on UNESCO’s Expert Facility on the 2005 Convention for the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions from 2011 to 2018.

With 36 plays and numerous nominations and awards, he is considered as one of South Africa’s leading contemporary playwrights.

He is the 2018 recipient of the Sweden-based Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award in recognition of his contribution to the fight against apartheid, building a post-apartheid society, and the interface of peace and culture both in South Africa and across the African continent.

You can read his full bio here.

Brett Pyper is a South African arts, culture and heritage practitioner with over thirty years’ experience advancing and studying the country’s cultural-democratic transition. He grew up between Johannesburg and Pretoria/Tshwane, where his background as a classical musician informed his efforts to open up programming at the former performing arts councils as a young arts organiser. In the early 1990s, he arranged the first post-exile performances in Tshwane by returning jazz icons as well as showcasing the work of an emerging generation of musicians. He also worked with singer-songwriters, choirs, Afrikaans counter-cultural artists and colleagues in related performance disciplines including dance and theatre. Based on this work, as a Fulbright scholar, he earned Master’s degrees from Emory University in Atlanta (in Interdisciplinary Studies) and New York University, where he earned his PhD on contemporary jazz culture in South Africa in 2014. He has taught arts, culture and heritage policy and management as well as ethnomusicology and popular music studies at Wits and Rhodes Universities. From 2008 to 2013 he was CEO of the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival (KKNK), a major festival of art, popular and vernacular culture. He recently completed an 8-year term as Head of the Wits School of Arts, where he pursues ongoing research alongside his leadership responsibilities and supervises postgraduate work in music, theatre, dance, heritage and cultural policy. He regularly serves as a mentor for The Festival Academy, having co-hosted Atelier Johannesburg in 2018 – the first on the African continent.

Horacio Pérez (Santiago, 1982) is a curator, creative producer, cultural manager, and artist, currently based in Chile. His professional work is related to artistic exchange, programming, international distribution, and the networking of performing arts. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Theater Department of Universidad de Chile, and a Master of Arts in Arts Politics from New York University.

He has worked in Chilean festivals and institutions like the Theatre Department of Universidad de Chile, PLATEA: Programmers Week of Santiago a Mil International Festival, and Teatro Nacional Chileno, among others, and as a director, actor, and professor in Santiago. He has also worked abroad at Próximamente festival at KVS (Brussels) and The Public Theater (New York) and has been selected to participate in international experiences of professional development like Producers Academy and Critical Collaborations.

He is currently the creative producer and tour manager of Chilean companies Bonobo and Teatro La María, showing their work in countries like Japan, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, the United States, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile.

Vigdis Jakobsdottir is an Icelandic theatre director and educator and has been Artistic Director and CEO of Reykjavik Arts Festival since 2016. The multidisciplinary festival is the leading arts festival in Iceland and has been running since 1970.

Vigdis is passionate about the ability of the arts to challenge conceptions, shape society and celebrate humanity. She feels strongly that access to the arts should not be reserved for the privileged few but should be accessible to all. Throughout her practice as theatre director, educator and festival director she continuously explores ways to reach out to an ever broader audience demographic through meaningful artistic exchanges.

Before Reykjavik Arts Festival Vigdis directed performances at the National Theatre of Iceland and with numerous independent theatre companies. She was Head of Education at the National Theatre of Iceland from 2002-2011 and adjunct and later programme director for MA studies in Theatre Education at the Iceland Academy of the Arts from 2002-2016. She is the founder of Þjóðleikur – The National Youth Theatre festival in Iceland which she led from 2008-2017 and UNGI -an international performing arts festival for young audiences in Reykjavík, (artistic director from 2013-2016).

Vigdis was elected on the executive committee of ASSITEJ (International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People) in 2011 and was vice president of the association from 2014-2017. In 2021 she was elected honorary member of ASSITEJ.

In 2011 Darya Bassel joined the team of Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (Kyiv) where she still works as a programmer and head of industry. Parallel to her work at the festival she works in film production. My Father is my Mother’s Brother, dir. Vadym Ilkov (the most innovative film in the international competition at Visions du reel 2018), was the first film where she worked as associate producer and festival agent. In 2019, together with Vika Khomenko she launched Moon Man film production. The company focuses on creative documentary and fiction films with a strong authorial director’s approach. In 2022 Moon Man’s first production, the documentary Outside (dir. Olha Zhurba), had its world premiere at CPH:DOX. Darya was co-producer of the award-winning documentary A House Made of Splinters (dir. Simon Lereng Wilmont). She has served on juries at numerous festivals, including IDFA, Visions du reel, Krakow IFF, One World. She was also invited by Ukrainian TABOR production to produce together with Yelizaveta Smith the Maksym Nakonechnyi’s debut feature, Butterfly Vision, which premiered in Cannes 2022, in Un Certain Regard.

Jacob Boehme is a critically acclaimed theatre maker and choreographer, from the Nharangga and Kaurna Nations, creating work for stage, screen, large-scale public events and festivals. Jacob is also Director, First Nations Programs at Carriageworks, Australia’s largest multi-arts centre. For contemporary and experimental arts.

Alumnus of NASIDA College of Dance and the Victorian College of the Arts, (MA in Arts – Playwriting, MA in Arts – Puppetry) Jacob has led the artistic direction of Tanderrum (Melbourne Festival), Boon Wurrung Ngargee (Yalukit Willam Festival), Thuwathu (Cairns Indigenous Arts Fair), Geelong After Dark and was the founding Creative Director of Yirramboi Festival, recipient of the 2018 Green Room Award for Curatorial Contribution to Contemporary and Experimental Arts.

Jacob is the writer and performer of the critically acclaimed solo work Blood on the Dance Floor, recipient of the 2017 Green Room Award Best Independent Production.

Jacob is an Australia Council for the Arts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Fellow and has been a member of International Advisory Committees for the Calouste Gulbenkian UK Inquiry into the Role of Arts Organisations, the Ministry of Culture Taiwan South East Asia Advisory Panel, the Global First Nations Advisory and Bibu Festival International First Nations Curatorial Committee.

Jacob is developing The Wild Dog Project: a multi-disciplinary exhibition and gathering, connecting dingo stories and songlines between South Australia, Northern Territory, Far North Queensland and South East Asia, as part of Tarnanthi Festival in 2022.

Jacob is currently the inaugural Director First Nations Programs for Carriageworks, one of Australia’s largest experimental and multi-arts venues.

In September 2008, Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis became Prime Minister of Haiti. While Prime Minister, Pierre-Louis also served as Minister of Justice and Public Security. Upon leaving office in November 2009, Pierre-Louis resumed her activities at the foundation she created in 1995 under the name Fondation Connaissance et Liberté – FOKAL. She is now FOKAL’s President, coordinating special projects in Sustainable Development, Higher Education and National Heritage with an emphasis on human rights and gender justice. Pierre-Louis is also a professor at Université Quisqueya, Haïti.

In 2010, President Zapatero of Spain nominated her as a member of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, based in Spain. In 2014, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon nominated her as a member of a High Level Panel on a Technology Bank for the Least Development Countries. In 2017, UN Secretary General Antonio Guteres nominated her as a member of High Level Advisory Board on Mediation.

Michèle Duvivier Pierre-Louis is a member and administrator of a Review “Chemins Critiques” in which she wrote several articles along with other Haitian and Caribbean writers, on politics, gender issues, economics, arts and culture. She has also contributed to several books and reviews. She is the Board Chair of Le Centre d’art in Haiti (www.lecentredart.org, and of the new Caribbean Culture Fund.

She has received several awards and distinctions in her career. She holds a “Doctorate Honoris Causa” in Humanities from Saint Michael College, Vermont in 2004. From September through December 2010, she was a Resident Fellow at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government/Institute of Politics. In December 2014, she received a second “Doctorate Honoris Causa” from the University of San Francisco, California.

In November 2020, as a member of the Council of Women World Leaders (CWWWL), she received the Women Political Leaders (WPL) Trailblazer Award at the Reykjavik Global Forum Women’s Leader 2020. In February 2021, she was elected Board Chair of Le Centre d’art. In March 2021, she was among Apolitical’s 100 Most Influential People in Gender Policy. The list celebrates people working on gender policy and making the world more equitable, whether they exert their influence through policymaking, public service, research, philanthropy, advocacy, or activism. She was very recently asked to join the International Board of the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

Orwa Nyrabia is the Artistic Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), the world’s largest documentary film and new media festival. Before IDFA, Orwa co-founded Syria’s first independent film festival, DOX BOX, with Diana El Jeiroudi, and worked as producer, with credits such as Republic of Silence (Diana El Jeiroudi, Venice 2021), Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi, Venice 2020), Silvered Water (Ossama Mohammad and W. Bedirxan, Cannes 2014), Return to Homs (Talal Derki, IDFA 2013) and Dolls, A Woman from Damascus (Diana El Jeiroudi, IDFA 2007) a.o.

His work was recognized by awards such as the George Polk Award, the HRW Courage in Filmmaking Award, and the Katrin Cartlidge Award, a.o. He is a co-founder and the chair of the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR), and a board member of DOX BOX e.V and the Festival Academy. In the period 2012-2013 he served as board member for Syria's prinemt grassroots activists network, the Local Coordination Committees (LCC) and as interim director for the Violations Documentation Center, an independent Syrian human rights organization.

An actor by training (Gate of the Sun, Yusri Nassrallah, Cannes 2004), he started his film career as 1st AD of Ossama Mohammad (Sacrifices, Cannes 2002) and worked as a journalist at the same time until he co-founded his first company in Damascus 2002, and later in Berlin where he co-founded No Nation Films in 2014.

Ellada Evangelou was born and raised in Cyprus. She has studied in Cyprus and the United States. She has worked as a dramaturg, theater director, workshop facilitator, and independent consultant, in collaboration with theater companies, NGOs, and international organisations, including UNDP and the Anna Lindh Foundation. She teaches theater and dramaturgy courses in higher education in Cyprus and the United States. She is interested in the relationship between theater/dramaturgy and identity, and works in the intersection of aRtivism and scholarship in post-colonial, post-conflict communities.

She is co-founder of Rooftop Theatre, was a member of the Leadership Circle of the IMPACT Project (2017-21), and a 2020-21 Global Fellow of the International Society for the Performing Arts. From 2019 -2021 she was the Artistic and Executive Director of the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival, and in 2022 she part of the new inclusive curation model of the Buffer Fringe festival, as a member of the Buffer Fringe Hive, working closely with the Home for Cooperation, in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Shahidul Alam obtained a PhD in chemistry from London University, before taking up photography. Returning to his native country Bangladesh in 1984, he campaigned to bring down autocratic general Hussain Muhammad Ershad. In his pursuit of social justice he set up the award winning organisations, Drik, Pathshala and Chobi Mela, through media, education and culture.

His book “My journey as a witness” has been described by John Morris, the legendary picture editor of Life Magazine, as the ‘most important book ever written by a photographer’. A recognised public speaker, Alam has lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford and Yale universities. He has been exhibited at MOMA, Tate Modern and Centre Georges Pompidou.

His awards include the Lucie Foundation award considered the Oscars of photography, as well as the Shilpakala Award, the highest cultural award given to Bangladeshi artists. Alam is the only person of colour to have chaired the prestigious international jury of World Press Photo.

He is a visiting professor of Sunderland University and an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. In 2018 he was jailed and tortured for speaking out against his government’s repressive practices.

Thobile Maphanga is a Durban-based dance practitioner, writer, creative collaborator, and emerging festival curator from South Africa. She is passionate about the arts and more specifically how we use the arts to negotiate our collective and individual being. As someone who has worked in various parts of the arts industry, she is always eager to learn and share knowledge about how we improve the industry as we all know that art has such a vital role to play within society.

As a contemporary dance scholar, Thobile is currently reading for her master’s in performance studies. Her current preoccupation is with Black female narratives and how Black women are writing themselves into history now.

Her dance career has spanned two decades, working with various South African Companies and choreographers. She has collaborated with local and international artists to produce independent work and was a co-founder of The Rickshaw Collective. She currently sits on the Flatfoot Dance Company board, is a curatorial mentee for JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience under the mentorship of Artistic Director Dr. Lliane Loots and holds a position on the JOMBA! Masihambisane Dialogues steering committee.

Her dance writing has featured in the JOMBA! Khuluma, UK’s Hotfoot Online and the USA’s In Dance Magazine.

Atje Drexler is Senior Vice President Global Issues, Germany, overseeing the work of the foundation in the topics Inequality and Peace. Before that, she headed the Department International Relations Europe and its Neighbors until 2020, and was responsible for developing and coordinating the Africa portfolio of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

Atje has been with the Robert Bosch Stiftung since 2001 starting her career in the Health and Science Department where she held the position of Deputy Head of Department from 2007 through 2012. Before joining the foundation, she worked in the automotive industry after graduating from the University of Göttingen in 1998 with degrees in Slavic Studies and Economics.

Hooman Nassimi (born in Iran, raised in Germany, working in NL) commits to creating an inclusive society through & with newcomers, both locally and globally. Hooman's vision is to empower newcomers through events and festivals and create social cohesion.

In 2018, the free New Faces toolkit was developed after seeing the enormous benefits of newcomer participation at cultural events. In the last two years, more than 2000 newcomers have directly participated in a variety of roles at the largest venues and festivals in the Netherlands. More and more cultural organizations are embracing this as the standard approach for newcomer inclusion.

Lea Perekrests is the Deputy Director of Operations for Europe & MENA at the Institute for Economics and Peace in Brussels. She is responsible for managing partnerships, overseeing consulting operations, and curating Positive Peace trainings across the region. With a Master’s Degree in International Conflict and Security from the University of Kent, her expertise lies in security and foreign policy analysis. Lea has a background as a human rights investigator, a policy advisor, and in academia, developing university-level curriculum for international relations courses. Lea is originally from Boston, Massachusetts and holds a BA in International Relations at Connecticut College (USA).

Mira joined Build Up in March 2020 and has since focused on social media research in conflict contexts, and managing peace innovator programs in the MENA region. Before that, she worked on political development and service delivery projects in Lebanon while facilitating communication among groups in conflict, conducting field-focused contextual analysis and participatory research. Based in Beirut, she also dedicates time to intersectional queer and feminist community organizing, subversive conversations, and spicy food.

Mwandwe Chileshe is the Global Policy Lead for Food Security and Agriculture at Global Citizen, an organization that hosts the Global Citizen Festival, an annual music festival where attendees earn free tickets by taking actions to end extreme poverty.

Mwandwe previously led the Zambia Civil Society Scaling up Nutrition Alliance, and was significant in the start-up of Zambia’s first Parliamentary Caucus on Food and Nutrition. She is passionate about issues relating to poverty reduction and food security and since 2018 has led campaigns at Global Citizen that have delivered new financial and policy commitments towards agriculture and ending hunger. She has been an instrumental force in organizing in-country events and coordinating partner involvement in some of Global Citizen's major events and festivals.

Nadia Sokolenko currently works as Performing Arts Programme Manager in the Ukrainian Institute, a public institution affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. Its mission is to strengthen Ukraine's international standing through the means of cultural diplomacy. Before joining the team of Ukrainian Institute, she worked as a theatre critic, theatre and festival manager, curator and jury member, director assistant in theatre projects, editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian Theatre Magazine, curator of the Scene 6 theatre space at Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center.

Darius Cuplinskas is Director of the Ideas Workshop, a new hub for critical thinking and inquiry at the Open Society Foundations. Previously he directed OSF’s Information Program, which supported the global movement for digital rights and free expression online, the use of data and networked technologies by civil society, and the Open Access movement that is transforming scholarly communications. He is also director of the London office of the Open Society Foundations.

Diego Aparicio is the founder and artistic director of Queer Wave: the Cyprus LGBTQIA+ film festival. Queer Wave had its inaugural edition online in August 2020, followed by a 10-day physical edition in September 2021. Diego was one of 20 finalists worldwide shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Youth Awards, amongst 1,000 nominees from 43 countries. He served as an official jury member for Giornate degli Autori at the Venice International Film Festival in 2018, and has assisted the Giornate as pre-selector in their past three editions. He was also part of the selection panel for the 2022 LUX Audience Award, presented jointly by the European Parliament and the European Film Academy. Diego’s credits as production assistant include four international co-productions, two of which premiered at the Cannes Critics’ Week and Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. He graduated with a physics degree from Imperial College London in 2016.

Gabriele Gauler has been working at the Goethe-Institut for more than thirty years in different posts in Germany, Europe and East Asia.

Her main focus has been on German language teaching and German teacher training. In 2000 she developed a quality management scheme for language training within the Goethe-Institut, which is still in use.

While working in Budapest and Hong Kong she was also responsible for the cultural programmes centering on film, fine arts and literature.

She has been working in Cyprus since February 2022.

Leisa is a graduate of the Centre for Sustainable Leadership and designed and led the Graduate Certificate course in Community and Cultural Engagement with the Centre for Community Cultural Partnerships at the VCA, University of Melbourne until its closure in 2017.

She is a regular collaborator, workshop facilitator and artist development mentor with Internationally renowned Back to Back Theatre and an artist mentor with Arts Access Victoria.

Leisa’s practice has also been in continuous dialogue with International contemporary performance across Asia + Europe with a focus on advocacy for an AustralAsian perspective on contemporary performance and training.

Maria Efstathiou (Nicosia, 1983) works at NiMAC since 2017. She worked as a culture editor at Kathimerini (Cyprus) from 2008 until 2010. She worked on various projects and cultural spaces in Cyprus: 2017-present: NiMAC, Nicosia / 2012-2014: isnotgallery, Nicosia / 2011-2012: Fytorio, Nicosia / 2010: Omikron Gallery, Nicosia / 2005-2006: Manifesta 6, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, NiMAC, Nicosia.

She curated the exhibitions: 2021, March-April, Teasing Creatures + The Sea Glass Factory, Giorgos Gerontides solo exhibition, GARAGE, Nicosia, CY / 2012, April-May, Revolv.er, Fytorio, Nicosia, CY / 2011, May-July, A.I.P., isnotgallery, Nicosia, CY / 2007, November-December, Nymålat, Konstacademien, Stockholm, SE (co-curator: Lisa Böstrom).

Yiannis Toumazis studied Civil Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, Theatre Design at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, in The Netherlands, and Theory of Art and Aesthetics at the University of Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens, France, where he received his Ph.D. He was Professor in the Department of Fine and Applied Arts, of Frederick University [2009-2022] teaching Aesthetics, History of Art and History of Design. He was also the coordinator of the doctoral program “PhD in Art and Design Practices”.

He has been the Director and Chief Curator of NiMAC [The Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre, Associated with the Pierides Foundation] (1994-2022). He was also the Director of the Pierides Foundation, one of the oldest private cultural institutions in Cyprus. He has designed, organized and curated more than hundred modern and contemporary art exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad. In 2011, he was the curator of the Cyprus Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy.

He is author of numerous publications, exhibition catalogues and other scientific articles. He has been actively involved in Museum Design, including the award-winning THALASSA Municipal Museum in Ayia Napa. He has extensively designed for the theatre in The Netherlands, Greece and Cyprus.

In January 2014, he was appointed by the President of the Republic of Cyprus Chairman of the Board of the Cyprus Theatre Organization (THOC). He was reappointed for a second term in 2016. In May 2015, he was appointed by the President of the Republic Vice-President of the Bi-communal Technical Committee of Culture, which aims to bring together the two main communities of Cyprus through Culture. In 2011, he was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Republic for his contribution to Culture. In 2020, he was unanimously elected Corresponding Member of the Cyprus Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts.

Christine van Winkle is a professor of Recreation Management at the University of Manitoba. As a former festival coordinator and attraction consultant, Christine brings both practical experience and theory-based research to inform practice. Christine is committed to community-based research that explores visitor experiences at events. Throughout her career she has explored learning at events, information and communication technology at events and event emergency management. Christine’s work is widely published in event, leisure and tourism journals and she has received numerous Emerald Literati awards for her work published in the International Journal of Event and Festival Management.

Amy Gowen (1994) works across the fields of programming, publishing, curating, editing, and writing. In 2019 she completed her MA in Arts and Society at Utrecht University, receiving the cum laude. Since then, she has worked as Host for CASCO Art Institute Working for the Commons, Utrecht NL, City and Arts Curator and Publications Editor for Onomatopee Projects, Eindhoven NL, and Publications Manager for School of Commons, ZH, where she was also a 2020-2022 research fellow. Amy is part of the core International Community Arts Festival (ICAF) team, working as Programme Assistant and Content Coordinator. Alongside her role at ICAF she runs her own commons-based publishing house, HumDrum Press.

As co-founder of the Present Tense ensemble, Bryce Ives created a unique body of performance-based work and collaborated with some of Australia's most significant arts organisations. As Director of the Arts Academy Ballarat, he led one of Australia's leading creative arts schools. His experience also includes programming and artistic leadership, acting as Artistic Director of preeminent independent performance venue Theatre Works and Artistic Director of the Fairfax Festival across the Swan Hill Murray Mallee Region. Outside of performance, Bryce has been a broadcaster on radio and television and was one of the driving forces in establishing youth community media organisation the SYN Youth Media, one of Australia’s largest youth media participation projects, and in building the impact of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Heywire regional youth program – a leading community-generated media project in Australia.

Derya Ulubatlı is an Art Historian who specialized in Cypriot Art, bi-communal art projects and the role of art in peacebuilding. After completing her undergraduate education on Art History at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Derya studied for her master’s degree on History and Criticism of Art at Milan University (Università degli Studi di Milano). Her master research was on bi-communal art projects and their contributions to the reunification of the island. Now, she is writing her Phd thesis on war, migration, otherness and border themes in Turkish Cypriot art and conducting research on art in Cyprus and Cypriot artists under the umbrella of Eastern Mediterranean University’s Center for Cyprus Studies.

Kat Kats is a writer and dramaturg who writes for stage, screen and live art. Her works have been performed in Australia and internationally. Kat holds a Masters in Writing for Performance and has trained alongside renowned Australian artists Jenny Kemp, Raimondo Cortese, and New York artists Sibyl Kempson, Mac Wellman and 7 Daughters of Eve.

Maria Varnakkidou (1988) is a Cypriot theatre director who was born in London, UK but currently lives in Cyprus. She studied Modern Drama (2010) at Brunel University and then completed her Master’s Degree in Theatre Directing (2011) at Royal Holloway University in the UK. She has been working in the theatre and film world for the past ten years with various types of projects. Her interests include devised theatre, immersive theatre, community theatre and creating work for social change and critical thinking. She facilitated numerous theatre workshops in Cyprus and London. As well as, worked as theatre facilitator in several Erasmus+ projects in Europe. Her facilitation work focuses on theatre for social change.

Nihal Soğancı is part of the Home for Cooperation team and is currently continuing her PhD in Social Anthropology at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens. She is part of the Buffer Fringe Hive 2022 and was the co-creative director of the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival 2020-2021. Her research and work focus on creative tactical forms of everyday and interdisciplinary practices that combine anthropological approaches with contemporary artistic practices. She holds an MSc in International Public Policy with a particular focus on Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation from the University College London (UCL) and BA in Languages and Translation from the University of Surrey, UK. She has published and presented her work in various symposiums and conferences and organises collage workshops.

Raffi Feghali is a director, storyteller, performer, percussionist, theater sound designer, and peacebuilder. He‘s directed more than 25 Theatre of the Oppressed, improvisational theatre, and scripted performances since 2009. As a performer he has performed in more than 60 shows worldwide, under many international directors. Raffi is one of the people who brought improv to Lebanon in 2009 and he has recently embarked on a journey taking him back to his storytelling roots. He launched his first autobiographical monodrama, Peer Gynt of Bourj Hammoud, in 2018.