Our research
We are Scotland’s leading and most long-established Theatre Studies department, committed to producing world-leading research and scholarship that examines the aesthetic, socio-political, historical and ethical dimensions of theatre as a cultural practice. Interdisciplinary in orientation, we understand theatre and performance as unique objects of study, and as powerful lenses for thinking more broadly about questions of knowledge, meaning and value. Our work embraces a wide range of methods in developing innovative outcomes that encompass books, essays, performances, installations, films, websites and other hybrid forms.
Visit our individual Research Profiles for full details of our work across the team.
Research themes
The Theatre Studies team’s broader research and scholarship is currently organised around two hubs – Performance and Ecology, and Dramaturgy as Critical Practice – with a third hub focused on politics, community and social justice planned to launch in 2025.
The Performance and Ecology Hub’s research and practice takes multiple forms in investigating the potential and limitations of theatre and performance as ecological practices. That is, it seeks to ask how theatre and performance can inform a progressive and diverse investigation of humanity in a world that we see as much more than human. Projects include the exploration of architecture, geology and cities in Minty Donald’s Erratic Drift co-created with Nick Millar, Dee Heddon’s Walking Library co-created with Misha Myers, and Carl Lavery’s edited collection Performance and Ecology: What Can Theatre Do?
The Dramaturgy as Critical Practice Hub’s work takes an expanded view of dramaturgy as a starting point for exploring parallel questions about performance and its place in our culture: as a political, culturally and historically-located mode of knowledge production, and as a framework for interrogating the complex interrelationships of people, places and things. Recent projects linked to the hub include Anselm Heinrich and Michael Bachmann’s work on German and British performance archives, Graham Eatough’s collaboration with National Theatre of Scotland on The Reason I Jump and Cristina Delgado-Garcia’s work on affect in contemporary British and European theatre.
The interdisciplinary nature of this research is reflected in themes which cross between the activity of the hubs and other disciplines: these include digital culture, gender and sexuality, disability studies, justice and equity, class, post-colonialism and decoloniality, cultural policy, archival studies and historiography, and the medical humanities.
Projects responding to these and other related themes include Eirini Nedelkopoulou’s writing on digital culture, performance and phenomenology, Liz Tomlin’s Incubate/Propagate research network exploring alternative models for artist development in theatre and performance, Farah Saleh’s archival performance lecture investigating ways of confronting the United Kingdom’s colonial legacy in Palestine, and Sharifa Abdulla’s contributions to the Lancet Global Series on the Health Benefits of the Arts.
Recent and ongoing AHRC/UKRI-supported projects include:
- Deirdre Heddon’s Walk Create
- Stephen Greer’s Live Art in Scotland
- Liz Tomlin’s Class Concerns - Figurations of working-class subjects in UK theatre practice and policy
Partnerships, Impact and Knowledge Exchange
We work closely with organisations across the arts and culture sector on projects that seek to extend our research community to include diverse publics and institutions in Scotland, the UK and internationally. Collaborators include National Theatre Scotland, The Citizens Theatre, Playwrights Studio Scotland, The Common Guild, Take Me Somewhere Festival, Goethe Institute, Glasgow City Council, The Work Room, Living Streets and Paths for All, Arts Council England, INLAND-CAR (Madrid), University of Kyushu (Japan) and the Museum of Loss and Renewal (Italy).
Staff who work as artists and practice-based researchers are leading practitioners in their field and have been commissioned to make work in prestigious festivals, such as Edinburgh and Manchester International Festivals, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Arts, Triennale Milano Teatro and ANTI Contemporary Art.
We develop and present our research in a broad range of scholarly and public contexts including international conferences (IFTR, Psi, ATHE), national media (BBC Radio, Channel 4, The Scotsman, The Herald) and keynote presentations.
Talks, conferences and symposia
Theatre Studies at Glasgow is proud to host a long-running series of public research talks – the Glasgow Theatre Seminars - that include speakers from interdisciplinary and diverse backgrounds.
We have also been active in curating high profile interdisciplinary research events, often working in collaboration with non-academic partners. Past events include are ‘On Drifting’, a funded project examining the legacy of the Situationist International; ‘The Theatrical Turn’, a collaboration with The Common Guild that investigated points of convergence between contemporary visual art and theatre practices; ‘The Art of Careful Practices’, an exploration of how to take care of others and self in participatory performances; THEN/NOW, an interdisciplinary enquiry into public art, heritage and ecology; Dramaturgies of War, a colloquium reflecting on how theatre has pre-empted, reflected upon and critiqued war and conflict; and 'Incubate Propagate’, a series of symposia that drew together academics, theatre producers and arts policy makers from across the UK to discuss how best to facilitate greater socio-economic diversity within artist development structures.
Postgraduate study
We have extensive experience in developing successful funding proposals for doctoral projects, including interdisciplinary and practice-research enquiries. Visit our PGR directory for more details about the ongoing projects of our energetic and international doctoral community across the School of Culture and Creative Arts.
To discuss the possibility of undertaking PhD research, please contact the member of the team whose interests and expertise most closely match your project.
Theatre Studies has strong links with Film and Television Studies and the Centre for Cultural Policy Research. We share areas of collaborative interest in the curation of culture, digital arts, gaming, cultural policy, television in its industrial, social and aesthetic dimensions, performance on stage and screen, aesthetics and ecology. These shared interests inform a range of activities, from reading groups to PhD projects to performance works.