Claire MacDonald is a writer and Unitarian minister who lives between the UK and Greece and whose current research explores the connection between the creative and the spiritual. Between 2015-17 she undertook ministry training at Harris Manchester College Oxford while completing a theology MA at Heythrop College, University of London, focusing on the impact of modernity on the three Abrahamic faiths. From 2017 to 2022 she served the congregation at Lewisham Unity in south London as their minister and from 2022 – 2026 was college Chaplain and Ministry Tutor at Harris Manchester College. Her religious thinking and writing share with her creative practice an interest in the social and spiritual commons, the place where spiritual awareness meets social change.
Claire has worked in the arts for more than four decades. She co-founded the influential company Impact Theatre Cooperative in 1978 and moved into teaching and writing following a junior Judith Wilson Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge. She has worked extensively in teaching and leadership in British and American Universities as well as holding Fellowships and Visiting positions in Australia, Norway and the Netherlands.
Since the mid-1980s Claire has written on the experimental tradition in theatre and performance, focusing on women artists and writers across cultures and genres, including most recently the Greek artist Leda Papaconstaninou for her retrospective Time in My Hands, National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens, 2024. She co-founded, and edited for a decade, the cross-disciplinary journal Performance Research; is an Associate Editor of PAJ: a Journal of Performance and Art, is a former Chair of the Live Art Development Agency and is on the Board of the journal Performance and Religion.
