I’m thrilled to share that Improvising With and In Higher Education: All Together Now is now officially live in eBook form through Palgrave Macmillan / Springer!
Read it here ➤
This has been a long and meaningful journey of co-creation. For the past several years, an ensemble of educators, scholars, artists, organizers, and practitioners from across the world has been working together to explore how improvisation can transform higher education — not just as a topic of study, but as a way of being, becoming, learning, and building together.
Setting the Stage
The book opens with Act I: Setting the Stage. We invite readers to imagine higher education as a collective performance in Scene 1. In Scene 2, we explore the radical democratic potential of improv — what happens when we move from expertise toward curiosity, from hierarchy toward ensemble, from certainty toward play.
Improvising Across Acts
From there, the book unfolds as a living performance in five additional acts:
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Act II spotlights performances of improv within higher education administration, showing how “Yes, and…” can inform leadership and equity work (Scenes 3–4).
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Act III turns toward faculty and staff improvisation (Scenes 5–6), highlighting growth, vulnerability, and transformation from the margins of academia.
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Act IV offers performances of improv in classrooms. Here, contributors bring improvisation into mathematics, technology, writing, psychology, and education (Scenes 7–11), reminding of the radical learning and teaching environments improv makes possible.
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Act V bridges universities and communities, featuring projects like The Brincadas Project in Brazil, which uses play as a path toward justice and equity (Scene 12).
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Act VI closes with reflection and renewal, returning to the idea that “the end is in the beginning” — a recognition that every educational act is an improvisation still unfolding (Scene 13).
Between the acts, nine interludes weave poetry, dialogue, and collective reflection — bringing together dozens of voices in playful, performatory conversation.
All Together Now
This book is both product and process — a living ensemble that invites readers to build with it. It asks:
How do we create new worlds in higher education, and who might we become in the process?
Over the next month or so, I’ll be hosting a few virtual meet-and-greet gatherings — informal celebrations where readers, co-authors, and curious collaborators can meet, read, and improvise together. Stay tuned here for dates, Zoom links, and creative invitations.
For now, I invite you to explore the eBook, share it with your circles, and perhaps (re)initiate your own improvisations with it.
Let's (continue to) create higher education and the world.
All together now.
