Dr Jennifer Essex is a choreographer, director and researcher working across participatory performance, digital interaction and socially engaged practice. Her work explores how collective creative processes can foster community cohesion, wellbeing and democratic engagement.

She was Artistic Director of HOME (2024), a large-scale, place-based project engaging over 3,000 participants across the Tees Valley in co-created performance activity. Her earlier work REPLICAS (2016; remounted 2025) pioneered the use of real-time messaging within live performance to explore how digital communication shapes audience experience and emotional response.

Jennifer was a co-investigator on the AHRC-funded project Empowering Children to Shape the Future of Research on Social Inequality, Health and Wellbeing (2023–24), working with children in areas of multiple deprivation to co-design creative approaches to research.

Her research contributes to Teesside University’s cross-disciplinary strategy, aligning arts and humanities methods with community partnerships and emerging technologies to address regional inequalities, support civic pride, and enhance health and wellbeing through place-based, co-produced practice. She holds a PhD by completed works in Interaction in Performance.