Senior Lecturer in Acting & Performance

  • Academic
  • Professional Practice
Pia Rickman

Pia Rickman (she/her) is an intimacy director, coordinator, and educator with nine years of experience in teaching acting and performance in HE, with dedicated focus in the field of intimacy work since 2018. Pia’s prior on-set experience as an assistant director and production manager, and her current position as a senior lecturer of acting, gives Pia a unique angle on intimacy coordination both within education and the industry.

Pia Rickman

Bio

Pia Rickman (she/her) is an intimacy director, coordinator, and educator with nine years of experience in teaching acting and performance in HE, with dedicated focus in the field of intimacy work since 2018. Pia’s prior on-set experience as an assistant director and production manager, and her current position as a senior lecturer of acting, gives Pia a unique angle on intimacy coordination both within education and the industry. As the Co-director of Nordic Intimacy Coordinators, Pia has shared her work with theatre and film artists around Europe, being a seek after speaker at conferences as well as industry events.

Pia has been developing innovative and sustainable systems for teaching, acting and staging intimacy and she is the in-house intimacy specialist on UCA productions. Her specialisms include working with both young and established performers as well as artists from non-traditional acting backgrounds, staging intimacy stories of consent and/or non-consent, and supporting productions with consent-forward, inclusive and trauma-informed advocacy and choreography. Her work has been featured in TV, radio, podcasts, magazines and newspapers as well as in a recent book on Finnish trailblazers in film “Neitoperhot ja Pahanhautojat” (Semeri & Virtanen 2023).

Pia has contributed to the intimacy guidelines published by the Finnish Film Foundation in 2020, and she was subsequently asked to author a guide for Working with an Intimacy Coordinator (2021). Pia is committee member and Co-founder of The Intimacy Practitioners’ Guild IPG Europe.

Her recent intimacy coordination work for TV and film includes The Diplomat, Romantic Getaway, Ted Lasso, Girl Picture and Tove.

Links:

Read more here:

  • Fellowship of the Advance HE
  • BECTU Intimacy branch
  • The Intimacy Practitioners’ Guild IPG
  • SAG-AFTRA Intimacy Coordinator Registry

In 2023, Pia was honored with “Deed of the Year Award” by Filmiaura at Finnish Film Awards’ (Jussi) for her work "towards creating a safer film industry".