Pictured: Adela Ruth Tompsett, co-Director, leads a lecture at The Ohio State University.
Adela Ruth Tompsett is principal lecturer in drama and performing arts at Middlesex University. She introduced Carnival Studies to the B.A.P.A. degree programme at Middlesex in 1986 and has established a widely used Carnival Archive and Study Resource there. She organized the “Catch the Spirit: A Carnival Arts Conference” at the Museum of London in 1997 and co-organized the Black Theatre in Britain Conference at the University of London two years earlier. She is a long-standing adviser on carnival arts with Arts Council England and recently served on the Mayor of London’s Carnival Review at the Greater London Authority. She has published writing on both black theatre and carnival arts and has contributed in an advisory capacity to a number of carnival-related exhibitions and performances.