Claire MacDonald initiated the space between^words in 2006 in order to research the encounter between art, writing and performance. She is Director of the International Centre for Fine Art Research, University of the Arts London, writes about visual art and performance and holds a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. She has just completed her first novel, ‘All that Remains’ and her current work for performance includes the new play ‘Correspondence,’ directed by Patrick Morris for Menagerie, and a new collaborative performance work with Charlotte Vincent of Vincent Dance. She is a co-founding editor of the journal Performance Research, and a Contributing Editor of Performing Arts Journal.

Claire Hind is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre at York St John University, UK. Her practice is concerned with the making and shaping of live performance using conceptual art and physical performance techniques, and her research is focused upon performance making using notions of ‘dark’ and ‘deep’ play. Her work Screen Test featured at the Performance Studies International conference at Brown University, USA, and at the Function live art event, with Nottingham based live artists Reactor. She has an international reputation for creating contemporary performance work and, since 1998, has directed several cross cultural collaboration projects in Romania for The Sibiu International Theatre Festival, and for the TJUZ Theatre St Petersburg. Claire has a history of making performance projects in collaboration with Claire Macdonald including the durational installation project In Bed at George Mason University, Virginia in 2003.

Simon Zimmerman is an artist and freelance Producer and Project Manager. Between 2005 and 2008 Simon was responsible for Arts Council England's "Artists' Insights" programme, and managed an investment of £3.5 million in support services for professional artists across England. Simon is currently Producer for London based theatre O, and the space between^words. As an artist, Simon's concerns focus on the relationships between language and loss, and he is currently developing a new project Understandable Loss bringing together his interests in endangered language research and erasure as writing.

Cathy Turner is a performance maker and academic. Her work is concerned with performance writing and new dramaturgies, as well as site-specific performance. She is currently a Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts and a member of the Centre for Research into Expanded Dramaturgies at Winchester University. She is joint author, with Synne Behrndt, of Dramaturgy and Performance, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007. Cathy is also a core member of Wrights & Sites, a group of artists whose work is concerned with our relationship to place and space. Key artists' publications are A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (2006) and An Exeter Mis-Guide (2003). Recent work includes Mis-Guide: Elsewhere in Fribourg for the Belluard Bollwerk International Festival in Fribourg, Switzerland (2008); Mis-Guide: Stadverführungen in Wien for the Vienna Festival and Tanzquartier Wien (2007); Possible Forests for the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World (2007) and the 4 Screens series, shown at various conferences and exhibitions (2005-7). Alongside her site-specific practice, her theatre-based work includes an Arts Council funded project in 2003, comprising three pieces made in collaboration with Dorinda Hulton and Peter Hulton (Air), Jane Munro (I Am Just Going Outside And May Be Some Time) and Julia Barclay (An Alliance). Each of these looked at a different approach to integrating writing and performing. In 2002, she took part in a durational performance of And On The Thousandth Night... with Forced Entertainment at the KunstenFestivaldesArts, Brussels. In the past, she has also written extensively for rural touring theatre and other theatre contexts. Between 2000-2003 she held an AHRB funded Research Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Exeter's Department of Drama, researching writing processes within contemporary performance.

Rebecca Riley is a writer currently working on her second novel, ‘Pullen’; a revenger’s tragedy set in the 18th century. In it, she explores ideas of trompe l’oeil, disguise, deception, fraud and perspective on the stage and in wider society. Her first novel, ‘Dick’, was a fictionalised biography of the highwayman Dick Turpin. Formerly a contributor to the Fortean Times and the Erotic Review, she collaborated in a piratical homage to Kathy Acker (‘Spread Wide’, with Paul Buck and John Cussans) published by Dis Voir in 2004.