Christopher John Email & Phone Number

Christopher John is an Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity (Atlantic Philanthropies, Columbia University, and Nelson Mandela Foundation) and was a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at California State University Polytechnic, Pomona. In 1997 he moved to South Africa to lecture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in the Drama and Performance Studies Programme. He has worked at AFDA since 2012. He has a Masters Degree in English and Doctoral Degree in Community Development from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.He has a particular interest in the development of Business Communication, Academic Writing, and Presentation Skills for the Digital Context. He has extensive experience working in Higher Education with a focus on Community Engagement. Before becoming an academic he worked in management training for Anglo American Corporation's group companies in Zimbabwe. He consulted to large mining houses, heavy industry, private sector companies, government, parastatals, and NGOs. He ran community projects in Zimbabwe shortly after the Gukurahundi (genocide), consulted to Care Mozambique and Redd Barna in Mozambique after the civil war, and ran community engagement projects in KwaZulu-Natal after the ANC/IFP political violence ended, and amongst the gangs in South African prisons.During his early working life he was an actor, teacher, and director under the name Christopher Hurst. He studied at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. He worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, in the West End, and on Broadway. He returned to Africa and worked with Mbongeni Ngema’s Committed Artists and Cont Mhlanga’s Amakhosi Productions. In 2013 he directed Mbongeni Ngema in his return to the stage in The Zulu, which played at the Grahamstown Festival and Market Theatre and script editor on Ngema’s screen play Asinimali. He will direct Mbongeni Ngema and Percy Mtwa, the original cast of Woza Albert, in a revival at the Durban Playhouse in 2018. The Tabex Encyclopedia Zimbabwe credits him with making an important contribution to the debates about decolonizing theatre in Zimbabwe in the 1980s.

Listed skills include Education Funding, Consulting, Academic Writing, Administration, and 3 others.