• Ph.D. (Curriculum Studies & Teacher Development) Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
• M.Ed. (Community Arts- Specialization in Theatre) Lesley University
• B.A. (Arts Education & Social Change) Vassar College

Rhoades has worked as an applied theatre and drama in education practitioner, teacher, and researcher with children, youth and adults for 18 years. Currently, she is the Theatre Education Coordinator with the School of Theatre and Dance at James Madison University. She teaches undergraduates training to be drama educators in schools and theatre artist-educator-advocates in community settings. Her research focus is on working with local refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants in partnership with 5 community organizations. Rhoades started the Community-Engaged and Activist Theatre class in collaboration with newcomers from Cameroon, China, El Salvador, Honduras, Kurdistan, and Nepal. The most recent performance with newcomers was entitled, El Río de la Vida/ The River of Life. Rhoades also works with cross-cultural youth programs, such as with the summer Voices Unbound! program, to produce performances such as Escape the Death Spiral: The Time is Now. Additional community-based work includes multiple collaborative projects with the Niagara Folks Arts Multicultural Centre in St. Catharines, Ontario, including a partnership with Niagara PRIDE utilizing Forum Theatre in the Centre’s LGBTQ Inclusion Campaign with Social Issues Theatre for Community Engagement students. Rhoades has also led professional development trainings on cross-cultural drama pedagogy for a variety of education audiences. Rhoades directed and facilitated devising projects in public schools, youth-serving community organizations, and through her own doctoral research with marginalized youth.

Teen Leadership Council developed and directed by Rhoades, Boston, 2013

Social Belonging & Creative Wellness in the Northeast Neighborhood of Harrisonburg

• 3-week bi-lingual devised theatre intensive with local youth leading to the final performance, Escaping the Death Spiral: The Time is Now. Youth artists share their perspectives on the state of the world, including the psychological and material toll of executive orders on topics such as immigration and transgender rights.

Cross-Cultural Community-Building and Applied Theatre: A Creative Collaboration between University Students and Newcomers

• Course-based collaborative research interrogated the impact of cross-cultural facilitation training and execution with newcomers and refugee participants in student teacher development. Engages with the question of how experience as participants in theatre teacher training impacts identity formation, specifically a sense of cultural resilience, in newcomers and refugees.

 Equity in Cultural Transitions: Theatrical Exploration of Transnational Journeys

• Community-based action research interrogated the potential for ensemble devising to serve as a site for cultural sustainability, social resilience, and equitable acculturation with refugee and newcomer adults to the Niagara region in Canada.

 Youth Artists for Justice: Examining Participation in Social Movements and Envisioning Futures through Applied Theatre

• Doctoral research examined how racialized, socioeconomically under-resourced secondary school-age youth in Toronto conceptualize their current and future roles within contemporary social movements and the larger political sphere through ethnodrama.

Reflections of Tomorrow original performance by doctoral research participants, Toronto, 2016

Arts & Youth Leadership Development in Action: Maximizing Potential through Youth Performing Arts Programs

• Participatory drama-based research study with marginalized youth artists in Boston

Gallagher, K. Rhoades, R. Bie, S and Cardwell, N. (2017). Drama in education and applied theatre, from morality and socialization to play and post-colonialism. In G. Noblit (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gallagher, K., Starkman, R., & Rhoades, R. (2017). Performing counter-narratives andmining creative resilience: Using Applied Theatre to theorize notions of youth resilience. Journal of Youth Studies, 20(2), 216-233.

Rhoades, R. (2018). Intersectionality and solidarity in curriculum-making theatre encounters with marginalized youth researcher-artists. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 16(1), 185-198.

Rhoades, R. (2019). Inciting solidarity through plural performativity and pedagogical aesthetics in ethnodrama with marginalized youth in Toronto. ArtsPraxis, 5(2), 129-143.

Rhoades, R. & Rodricks, D. (2020). Toward a creative solidarity: Implications of a drama pedagogy for the radical scholar-practitioner (pp. 145-166). In K. C. Schmitz and N. Grant (Eds.), Interrupting, infiltrating, investigating: Radical youth pedagogy in education. New York: DIO Press.

Rhoades, R. (2021). Ethnodrama of projectivity as hopeful pedagogy in envisioning non-dystopic futures with youth. Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance.

Rhoades, R. (2021). Nurturing hopeful agency: Applied theatre pedagogy in collaboration with social movements. Theatre pedagogy & climate crises. New York & London: Routledge.

Rhoades, R., & Pitts, L. (2024). Abolition in Prisons and Teacher Education through Theatre of the Oppressed: A Conversation between Practitioners & Participants. In (R. Eckert and L. Benge, Eds.) Into Abolition: A Guidebook for Liberatory Theatre-making Practices. New York and London: Routledge

Rhoades, R. (2025). Developing culturally sustaining pedagogy capacity in teacher education through collaborative applied theatre with newcomers. The New Educator.

She has presented at more than fifteen conferences in areas of education, theatre, and anti-oppression, including at the International Drama in Education Research Institute in New Zealand and Singapore, the International Drama in Education Association in Iceland, as well as the American Educational Research Association in Chicago, New York and Washington, DC.

Provost Award: Excellence in Community Partnerships, JMU, 2026

4-VA Scale-Up Grant ($25,000), 2025

Provost Award: Excellence in Research and Scholarship, JMU, 2024

4-VA Start-Up Grant ($7,000), 2024

Gandhi Center for Global Nonviolence Research Fellowship ($8,000), JMU, 2023-2024

Faculty Senate Mini-Grant, JMU, 2023

College of Visual and Performing Arts Development Grant, JMU, 2022-2023

IDEA Grant, Office of Access & Inclusion, JMU, 2022-2023

Provost Diversity Curriculum Grant, JMU, 2022

Featured Artist, Suitcase in Point, Art of the City Campaign, 2021

Innovation in Teaching and Learning Grant, Brock University, 2020-2021

Social Justice Research Institute Grant, Brock University, 2020

Doctoral Completion Award, University of Toronto, 2018-2019

National Ada Slaight Drama in Education Research Award, Young Peoples Theatre, 2016-2017

Connaught International Doctoral Scholarship, 2014-2019

Diane Shannon Price Student Leadership Award, Lesley University, 2013