Maribeth Diggle

Bio

Maribeth Diggle is an opera singer, director, scholar, and sustainability practitioner whose work integrates performance practice, embodied research, and leadership development. She is Associate Professor of Practice in the Executive Master of Natural Resources program at Virginia Tech, where she applies arts-based, embodied methodologies to strengthen communication, physical awareness, empathy, and collaborative leadership. Diggle’s work opens performance practice through the shared—though unevenly accessible—agency of breath, air, and atmosphere, translating embodied artistic tools into empowered, applicable practices for wider publics, as well as professionals. Her research foregrounds breath as both an expressive and relational force, enabling ethical presence, attunement, and adaptive response within complex systems. She is a PhD researcher at the Royal Institute for Theatre, Cinema, and Sound (RITCS) in Brussels, where her doctoral research focuses on Breath Art as an interdisciplinary practice situated at the intersection of performance, environmental humanities, and leadership..

Areas of Specialization

• Embodied communication and leadership
• Arts-based methods in sustainability practice
• Physical awareness and presence
• Empathy development
• Applied performance and pedagogy
• Breath Art and environmental humanities