All Faculty

Ziad Majed is a political scientist and Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Paris.

A lifetime theater professional—as an actor, writer, director, producer, and teacher—Lizzie is the founder and Artistic Director of Shake-Scene Shakespeare, currently the UK’s only cue-based teaching and performing company producing Shakespeare from cues only. Lizzie returned to academic study in her 50s and is researching a practice-led PhD (part time) at the Shakespeare Institute. Her experience as an actor, director, producer and book-holder for Shake-Scene, as well as her professional acting career, inform her research interests. Lizzie regularly runs workshops (in person and online) in the techniques required to make working from cued parts the vibrant acting experience it can be. Shake-Scene performed live cue-based productions from their creation in 2017 until the 2020 lockdown opened up the new medium of online theater. Twenty-nine full play performances later, as well as many performances of collected scenes, Shake-Scene are still performing regularly online, with an ever-growing international company, and recently returned to live performances with Much Ado About Nothing at the Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells.

Tom is the head of the arts division at Middlesex School, a boarding school in Concord, Massachusetts, where he teaches theater. A graduate of Northwestern University and the American Conservatory Theater, Tom enjoys working with high school students and using theater as a lens to examine the bigger world. When not creating imaginative worlds, Tom enjoys traveling in the actual world. He has led and directed trips with high school students in Oxford, London, Paris, Florence, and Vermont.

While at Cambridge, Vicky specialized in human geography and worked with refugees and asylum seekers in London and Calais. She went on to complete a Master of Science in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies at Oxford, furthering her interest in justice in the asylum system. After graduating, Vicky spent two years in the UK Government (Civil Service) in asylum and refugee policy and research, while also doing pro-bono research for the legal charity Just for Kids Law. In October 2021, Vicky started a PhD at Oxford, studying the criminalization of asylum seekers in the UK. She is Director of Screen Share UK, an organization that supports, informs and advocates against the digital exclusion of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Alongside her PhD, she runs events for the research group Border Criminologies, and is a participant in the Bonavero Institute’s Legal Aid Clinic, which involves paralegal work with a solicitor’s firm with clients at the prison HMP Huntercombe. In her spare time, Vicky learns intermediate Arabic and enjoys open water swimming.

Rob is a writer, teacher, and Los Angeles native, although travel keeps him away from Hollywood for months at a time. As an undergraduate art history major at UCLA, he was assistant arts editor for the Daily Bruin and worked kitchen prep in his dorm. While pursuing his master’s degree in film at USC, he worked as a phlebotomist, middle school English teacher, and realtor. He is currently shopping a TV pilot (Runway) and a feature-length script (No Kissing). If he hadn’t pursued a writing career, his second choice would have been to be a chef. He is a charter member of Slow Food and once had to move because his library of cookbooks had outgrown his apartment. Rob has taught numerous seminars at Putney’s international Pre-College programs, and at Pre-College at Amherst College, where he also served as director. He has worked with Putney for 22 years.

An architect from Serbia, Mihaela is an intellectual polymath with master’s degrees in cognitive science from the University of Vienna, neuroscience from King’s College London, and film aesthetics from Oxford. Until recently she was Director of Strategy and Development at the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford, partnering with the Oxford Foundation for Theoretical Neuroscience and AI. Mihaela has taught on summer programs at Oxford since 2014.

After earning master’s degrees in Economics (in Serbia) and Cognitive Science (in Vienna), Luka came to Oxford where he earned a doctorate in Experimental Psychology. His research focuses on the interplay between passions and reason, and he has taught innovative courses at both the university and secondary school levels—including summer programs in Oxford—since 2014.

During his undergraduate, Gonzalo specialized in human rights through his academic activity and volunteering in a shantytown, accompanying victims of police harassment, abuse, and violence. As a lawyer, he worked for three years in the Chilean State in the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, where he participated in the professional team responsible for decriminalizing pregnancy interruption. Then he did his LLM in LSE, where he got training in Social Sciences and Law and Society. In October 2020, Gonzalo began his PhD at Oxford Centre for Criminology, researching policing, police forces, and democratic theory. He is on the Board of a Primary School. In his spare time, he participates in literary discussion groups, cycles, and plays football (soccer).

While at California Institute of the Arts, Julian focused on experimental theater performance where he worked and collaborated with many international directors and performers from France, Mexico, China, and Poland. During his tenure at CalArts he devised an original piece with his professor which toured internationally and performed at the 8th Theater Olympics in India, workshopped at the Grotowski Institute in Poland, and performed at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. In addition to performing, he has been able to lead workshops at the University of Hyderabad, and Summerhall in Edinburgh. Julian has lived in London, Paris, and Mexico and has been a keen student of everything international cities have to teach. Currently, he is a school administrator and a French bilingual substitute teacher at the Lycée International de Los Angeles. This fall, Julian will be teaching several acting courses to freshman undergraduate students and high school students. He is fluent in French and Spanish, and proficient in Italian.