professor SUE JENNINGS PHD
Professor Sue Jennings PhD is an anthropologist, therapist, performer, and author. She is Visiting Professor at the University of Derby, Honorary Fellow of the University of Roehampton, and Professor of Play - awarded by the European Federation of Dramatherapy. She is Senior Research Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, Distinguished Scholar of the University of the Witwatersrand, and Honorary Fellow of Roehampton University. She has previously held academic posts at the Universities of Coleraine, Leeds Beckett, York St John, Roehampton and Hertfordshire, Adjunct Professor NYU, and Visiting Professor at HELP University, Kuala Lumpur.
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.
Professor Jennings is responsible for establishing the British Association of Dramatherapists, an endeavour she later shared with fellow pioneer Gordon Wiseman. Together they created many projects and training programmes in UK and overseas in Holland, Germany and Greece. She has also innovated the training and practice of Dramatherapy and the Playtherapy Method in UK, Malaysia, Romania, Korea, Greece and Turkey.
Professor Jennings has published over 50 books on different aspects of dramatherapy and play therapy, NDP, EPR, resilience, attachment, social and emotional intelligence, self-harming, trauma, dementia, depression and play. She has co-edited with Dr Clive Holmwood three International Handbooks for Routledge Publishers, on Dramatherapy (2018), (which won an academic award); Play, Therapeutic Play and Play Therapy (2020); and Therapeutic Stories and Story Telling (2021). Also for Routledge, Sue is completing her Selected Works, entitled Thither and Back Again: Journeys from Chaos to Order.
Professor Jennings’s doctoral field work was with the Temiars, a tribal people who live in the Malaysian rainforest. This research is her greatest influence on the development and establishment of Neuro-Dramatic-Play and has had a profound impact on all her education and therapeutic work. It was here that she realised that a society could have their own integrated system of both preventative and curative arts including drama, dance and music.
The other major influence on Dr Sue’s life and work is Williams Shakespeare and his plays and poetry. Her research at Stratford-upon-Avon, her schools work in Education and Shakespeare, and her own performances have enriched her understanding of imagery, poetry, rhythm and metaphor. She performed The Nurse’s Tale on the Edinburgh Fringe and on tour throughout the UK.
dr Clive Holmwood phd
Dr Clive Holmwood PhD is an NDP Practitioner and Trainer, a drama practitioner and a registered dramatherapist with over 30 years’ experience in the public, private and voluntary sectors.
Clive has worked closely with Sue Jennings, NDP’s founder, for a number of years and co-edited three Routledge International Handbooks with her on dramatherapy, play and therapeutic storytelling. He has written widely and actively researches in the fields of Dramatherapy, Creative Arts Education and NDP. Recent NDP research includes:
Holmwood, C. (2020) Neuro Dramatic Play and a Hero’s Journey, a Play based Approach in a Junior School in Jennings S. Holmwood, C. (Eds) The International Handbook of Play, Therapeutic Play and Play Therapy. London: Routledge.
Holmwood, Clive (2021), Older people, dementia and Neuro-Dramatic-Play: A personal and theoretical drama therapy perspective. Drama Therapy Review, 7:1, pp. 61–75, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/dtr_00061_1
Holmwood, C. (IN PRESS 2022) I’m going on a Bear Hunt’, Neuro-Dramatic Play, Multi-Sensory Informed, Storytelling Approaches to Working with Children Under Five in Jennings S. Holmwood, C. Jacksties, S. (Eds) Routledge International Handbook of Stories and Therapeutic Storytelling. London: Routledge
He is currently writing Games for Strengthening Attachment Bonds: Playful Activities for the Early Years to be published within the Early Years & Play Series edited by Sue Jennings for Hinton House Press in 2022.
Clive is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Therapeutic Arts at the University of Derby - where he teaches dramatherapy and supervises PhD students. He is currently developing research in NDP with people with young onset dementia in conjunction with the Universities of Derby and Northampton. He runs his own private practice where he offers dramatherapy to adults and children with mental health needs and learning disabilities: www.creativesolutionstherapy.org
CAROLINE ESSAME
Caroline Essame is an art therapist, occupational therapist, educator and play specialist with over 30 years’ experience in play and creativity based work in educational and hospital settings in England, India, Malaysia and Singapore. She is an international speaker and trainer and the founder of a social enterprise focused on play. Her masters thesis in education is on the role of teachers in play-based learning and she is author of "Fighting the Dragon, Finding the Self- why art and play are important in early childhood".
DR FRASER BROWN
Dr Fraser Brown is the first Professor of Playwork in the UK, and teaches on the BA (Hons) Playwork degree at Leeds Beckett University He is the specialist link tutor for the postgraduate play therapy courses run by the Academy of Play and Child Psychotherapy. He has presented at conferences across the UK and around the world, and has produced several key texts in the field of play and playwork. He is the Chair and Co-Founder of the Aid for Romanian Children charitable trust, and a member of the Executive Board of the Association for the Study of Play (TASP).
He is well-known for his research into the therapeutic effects of playwork on a group of abandoned children in a Romanian paediatric hospital. His wide-ranging research interests include the impact of deprivation on children’s play behaviour, the assessment of play value in children’s play spaces, and the role of play in the Montessori system of education.
After studying Politics at the University of Leeds, he spent three years as a playworker on an adventure playground in Runcorn. He then managed a range of projects for the North West Play Association. For two years he was District Leisure Officer in Middlesbrough and subsequently held posts with the National Playing Fields Association and Playboard. Before joining Leeds Beckett University, he was Director of the playwork training agency Children First for ten years.
JAFF CHOONG GIAN YONG
Jaff is a counsellor who is registered under the Board of Counsellors, Malaysia. Since obtaining a Bachelor Degree in Psychology, he has practised therapeutic play in his job for the past 10 years in educational and hospital settings (including juvenile schools, orphanage homes and prisons).
In 2016, Jaff completed his Master of Counselling from Open University Malaysia, and currently works as a university counsellor as well as being the director of NDP Consultancy in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. He is also a specialist career consultant in the Education Fair and a radio guest speaker. Jaff works as a volunteer in a community clinic that supports mental health and family issues with disadvantaged people.
Recently, Jaff started to integrate mindfulness and play into marriage and family therapy which has become his continuing research. Jaff is multi-lingual, speaking Malay, English, Mandarin, Hockkien and Cantonese. His counselling and therapy practice has a foundation in approaches drawn from Adler, Jung, Person-Centered, Cognitive-Behavioural, and Gestalt.
alison chown
Ali Chown is a former specialist advisory teacher for pupils with social, mental health and emotional needs (SMHE). She has been a lecturer at Foundation Degree level in Child Development and Behaviour for Learning and has been the academic dissertation supervisor for students completing their MEd.
Ali is an experienced play therapist who has been pioneering play therapy in the outdoors. To advance this cause she has authored Play Therapy in the Outdoors - taking play therapy out of the playroom and into natural environments published in 2014 by JKP and, more recently A Practical Guide to Play Therapy in the Outdoors - working with Nature published by Routledge earlier this year. Both books have been of interest to a wide community including student therapists, forest school practitioners, supervisors and those working in early years.
Ali has worked with a variety of client groups including those with profound and multiple learning difficulties, young people excluded from school, and those in public care. She currently works as a play therapist in a Dorset primary school, for the Family Counselling Trust (Dorset) and as a trainer and supervisor.
Ali is the director of Phoenix Play and is working with other play therapist to establish a co-operative of those working in the outdoors in order to foster greater collaboration and to share best practice.
KELLY HUNTER
Kelly Hunter is a British film, television, radio, stage and musical actress, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. She is a Laurence Olivier Award nominee and Radio Academy Award and TMA Awards winner.
The daughter of the actors Maria Charles and Robin Hunter, Kelly Hunter grew up in London and attended the Lady Margaret School in Parsons Green, followed by the Arts Educational Schools in London, which she left when she was 16. Her sister is the stage manager Samantha Hunter. She was married to the theatre director Simon Usher with whom she has two sons, Albert Usher (born 1996) and Charlie Usher (born 1998). She is the Founder and Artistic Director of Flute Theatre, a company which produces the works of William Shakespeare for interactive audiences. She lives in South West London.