Find a research supervisor in Contemporary Theatre and Performance

Research in the department covers a range of practices of and approaches to contemporary performance, with a particular focus on the use of critical, philosophical and political theory.

Our work around contemporary theatre and performance covers a broad range of practices from across Europe and Britain. We engage in the critical, political and contextual analysis of various modes of theatrical and performance-based practices, including new writing; devised performance; music; digital technologies; immersive and participatory performance; European theatre since 1960; festivals and tourism; Performance Art and Live Art; and acting and directing methodologies.

Dr Gianna Bouchard

Dr Gianna Bouchard

Senior Lecturer
Head of Drama and Theatre Arts

  • The medicalised body in performance
  • Anatomical dissection and bodily display as performance
  • Medical humanities
  • Politics of identity and performance
  • Contemporary theatre practice and critical theory
  • Live art Performance and interdisciplinary practice

Dr Joanna Bucknall

Dr Joanna Bucknall

Lecturer

  • Immersive, interactive & participatory performance practices
  • One-on-one performance
  • Practice research methodologies
  • Performance documentation
  • Performing heritage & legacy
  • Gamification & play in performance

Dr Claire French

Dr Claire French

Assistant Professor in Performance and Creative Practices

I am new to the department, teaching across theory and practice and leading the new MA in Performance Practices: Applied Artists. My specialisms include applied, autobiographical and multilingual performance practices. I am currently most connected to South African theatre and performance artists and activists, articulating new dramaturgies and frameworks for sustainable global collaboration. ...

Professor Adam J. Ledger

Professor Adam J. Ledger

Professor of Theatre and Performance

  • Performance practice, especially acting/performer and directing methodologies
  • Devising
  • The Odin Teatret
  • Performance and the environment (especially climate change)
  • Practice research

Dr David Pattie

Dr David Pattie

Senior Lecturer

  • Samuel Beckett.
  • Contemporary British theatre and performance.
  • Performance and popular culture.

Dr Caroline Radcliffe

Dr Caroline Radcliffe

Reader in Drama and Performance

  • Victorian theatre
  • Performance practice (contemporary and historical)
  • Popular theatre and performance
  • All areas of theatre and music
  • Technologies and performance

Dr Ellen Redling

Dr Ellen Redling

Lecturer

  • Contemporary socio-political drama (British and European)
  • Ancient Greek and Roman plays and their influence on British theatre
  • Medieval and Renaissance drama
  • Non-standard forms of contemporary drama and theatre
  • Drama and narration
  • Literary and cultural theory and networks
  • Ethics and drama
  • Post-postmodernism
  • Intermediality

Professor Graham Saunders

Professor Graham Saunders

Allardyce Nicoll Chair in Drama

  • Harold Pinter
  • British alternative or fringe theatre
  • Contemporary Shakespeare
  • Arts Council
  • Samuel Beckett

Dr Jon Venn

Dr Jon Venn

Teaching Fellow

My research primarily concerns mental health in contemporary performance, from representation of psychiatric diagnosis to autobiographical theatre. I’ve written extensively on British theatre and Irish theatre. My current work concentrates on understandings of suicide, including representations of suicide-as-protest and the mourning of suicide.

Dr Rose Whyman

Dr Rose Whyman

Senior Lecturer

  • Russian actor training, particularly Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov, Meyerhold
  • The history of Russian theatre of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
  • The plays of Anton Chekhov
  • Actor-training and Alexander  Technique