Denise J. Hart, a full Professor, is a highly sought after Consultant, Educator, Restorative Practices Facilitator and Speaker.  Her work  embodies the intersection of experiential arts, restorative pedagogy and  wellbeing. 

She has over 25 years of proven experience leading in higher education, arts management, theatre training, archival research and non profit theatre programming and coaching.

Throughout her career she’s honed mastery expertise in restorative theatre training practices, theatre for social change, cultural transformation through the arts, community collaboration & leadership development. 

Scholarly Research 

A research scholar and creative practitioner, Denise is a Restorative Practices Facilitator and the founder of the Restorative Theatre Performance Project (RTPP), is a collaborative arts-based research initiative that employs restorative practices through theatre to engender social change and to establishing baseline standards and optimal methods for wellbeing and harm reduction in performing arts training.

She has over 25 years experience creating impactful transformational trainings that center collaborative restorative practices to help arts leaders, educators and practitioners elevate the narrative of their organization and the arts industry. 

For her scholarship on the Howard Players, her body of work includes her book chapter,  The Howard University Players: From Respectability Politics to Black Representation, published in the Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance. 

Her digital humanities research, Howard Players Theatre History Archive deepens that scholarship by documenting the hidden interdisciplinary history of the Howard University Players collegiate theatrical production history from 1909-2019.  A significant resource for researchers, educators and the general public to study the history of Black Theatre, the digital archive offers a broader understanding of the Howard Players contribution to American Theatre.

In 2025 the Howard Magazine article, Howard University and the Birth of a New Black Theatre Tradition, engaged her as a featured scholar extensively referencing her research on the History of the Howard Players and in 2021 her television interview with Washington DC ABC7 news featured a look back on the Howard Players the oldest Black student acting group in the country.  

In 2024 she was honored to collaborate with Ford's Theatre as dramaturge, director and moderator for the interdisciplinary performance symposium, Written Then, Spoken Now: African American Letters to Lincoln written by historian, author and professor Johnathon White and with panelist historian scholar Dr. Edna Medford. The curated presentation aired on CSPAN.