Lea Marshall

Lea Marshall is Director of Research for VCUarts. Prior to this, she served as associate chair and producer for the VCUarts Department of Dance and Choreography for 17 years combined. Marshall has worked as a producer and arts administrator since 1999, and has produced the work of national and international artists in a range of venues, receiving funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, among others. She is a fellow of VCU’s Recruitment Inclusive Champions program and the Institute for Inclusive Teaching, as well as a facilitator in VCU’s Advance ITC (Immunity to Change) program. She serves as a visiting evaluator for the National Association of Schools of Dance, and on the board of the America College Dance Association, as Regional Director for the Mid-Atlantic South. As an arts writer and dance critic, her work has appeared in Imagining: A Gibney Journal, The Atlantic, Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher, Dance International, WomenArts, Richmond’s Style Weekly, Charlottesville’s C-ville Weekly, and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Her poetry has appeared in failbetter, BOAAT Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, B O D Y, Diode Poetry Journal, Thrush Poetry Journal, Broad Street Magazine, and elsewhere. Marshall earned her MFA in creative writing – poetry from VCU, and her BA in English from the University of Virginia. Beyond writing and academia, Marshall is currently studying Nonviolent Communication and end of life doula work.