Tamar Meskin is the co-ordinator of the Theatre Studies stream in the Drama and Performance Studies department (Howard College), and the discipline leader at present.  Her undergraduate and Honours studies were conduced at the University of Natal (Durban) where she graduated cum laude.  Awarded the Emma Smith Overseas Scholarship, she then went on to complete her MFA in Acting at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she was awarded the Jack Nicholson Prize for Acting.  Since returning to South Africa, she has directed over 50 productions, many of which have been nominated for awards, and which have covered a wide range of styles and forms.  She is particularly proud of her ten-year contribution to the departmental Shakespeare Festival (2001 – 2010), during which she co-directed all 10 productions.  In 2009, she embarked with her colleague Tanya van der Walt, on a series of inter-institutional collaborative projects in order to explore the synergies between the discipline and the students of drama in different higher education institutions.  This project is most noted for the critically acclaimed FrontLines project, which has been staged four times, including collaborations with the Durban University of Technology and the University of Pretoria, as well as generating several journal articles and book chapters. She has co-written productions and has served as a judge for the PANSA Playwriting Competition. She also continues to perform when she can.  She has presented papers at several national and international conferences, and has published in both journals and books.