Tania Cañas is the Arts Director at RISE Refugee and PhD student at the VCA. She sits on the Editorial Board for the International PTO Academic Journal and recently completed a research assistant internship at NYU’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.

Her research and work focuses on applied theatre as self-determination. She has presented at conferences both nationally and internationally: including University of California- Berkley, DePaul University – Chicago and Rhodes University -South Africa. She recently returned from a research graduate school in the Netherlands ‘Stolen Memories: Museums, Slavery and (De)coloniality.’

She has done theatre residencies in Northern Ireland (working in operational prisons and a youth group in Strabane), worked in the Solomon Islands to develop a Forum Theatre play with local women. Most recently she conducted Theatre of the Oppressed workshops with honours and masters students at Rhodes University and worked with the Soweto Theatre of the Oppressed group as well as local schools and prison groups in Grahamstown.