
A speaker, writer, and advisor on a range of arts and culture topics, Diane Ragsdale is director and co-lead faculty of the Cultural Leadership Program at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity. In June 2020 she completes a three-year appointment as assistant professor at The New School (TNS) in Manhattan, where she successfully launched, built, and directed a one-of-a-kind MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship for performance-based artists. While at TNS she also designed and launched a new graduate minor in Creative Community Development focused on the role of artists in building healthier, more equitable and more sustainable communities. She is a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where she lectured from 2011-2015. Her dissertation focuses on the relationship between nonprofit-professional resident theaters in the US and Broadway. Among her publications is In the Intersection: Partnerships in the New Play Sector, a report on a 2011 HowlRound convening of nonprofit and commercial theater producers; and an essay, “To What End Permanence,” in the 2019 Haymarket publication of the Foundry Theatre’s final presentation, A Moment on the Clock of the World. For more, check out her blog Jumper; Twitter handle @DERagsdale.