Research and Impact

Njabulo Chipangura [Maynooth University]

Wednesday, May 6th 2026, 16.00-17.30. Room: OC 1.04

The Manchester Museum which is a part of the University of Manchester holds approximately 35,000 ethnographic collections mostly dispossessed from local communities and ordered and categorized according to geographical regions of Africa, the Americas, Oceania, and Asia. The African collection is the largest with over 15 000 provenanced objects and an estimate of 1500 unprovenanced objects. In this paper – I will look at what it means to relationally care for African collections from colonial context in view of collaborating with and giving access to diaspora African communities as part of decolonisation. An empirical practice of decolonisation informed by notions of relational care and the disobedient museum will be presented drawn from my own practice and positionality having been the curator of this collection between 2022 – 2025. I argue that curating with care is not only a way of work but is a theoretical perspective that challenges structural discrimination, sexism, racism, systematic injustices and colonial legacies in museums. Care is also extended in this discussion to look at what it means to care for each other's pluriversality of epistemologies and ontologies by subverting epistemicides that are still embedded in museums. I will use examples drawn from an object handling workshop that I hosted at Manchester Museum as part of Africa Day Celebrations in May 2024. The aim of this workshop was to collaborate with communities in Greater Manchester of African heritage to gather new information about objects of African origin in the collection of Manchester Museum. Thereafter, new stories and new meanings were reimagined transcending usual anthropological discourses that traditionally treat African objects as timeless representations of cultures of the "other". Using this workshop as a contact zone of engagement - I present curating as a space of social care that facilitated dialogue and building of active relationships with diaspora communities.

Respondent: Chao Maina [University of Warwick]

We are deeply saddened to announce that Baz Kershaw died on 31st March.

Prior to his retirement, Baz Kershaw was Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick. Baz was a pioneer whose research was unfailingly innovative and forward-thinking. He led the way through his research into community theatre, the politics of performance, performance ecologies and his commitment to practice-based methodologies. He was author of The Politics of Performance (Routledge 1992), The Radical in Performance (Routledge 1999) and Theatre Ecology (Cambridge University Press 2007), editor of The Cambridge History of British Theatre, Vol 3 – Since 1895 and co-editor of Engineers of the Imagination (Methuen 1983, 2nd ed. 1990), Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen (Palgrave 2009) and Research Methods in Theatre and Performance (Edinburgh University Press 2011). His writing was translated into Spanish, German, Chinese, Indonesian, Arabic and Turkish. He co-founded the Practice-as-Research Working Group of the International Federation of Theatre Research and was co-initiator and founder member of the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA). In 2011 he was awarded Lifetime Membership of TaPRA in recognition of outstanding contributions to theatre and performance research internationally. He received similar honours from the Irish Society of Research and the Egyptian Ministry of Culture/Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre.

Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, former colleagues, collaborators, and students.

CMPS is delighted to invite you to our annual lecture from Dr. Colin Sterling (University of Amsterdam) on Weds 19th June at 5pm in the FAB cinema, followed by a wine reception.

Entitled Ecologisation is not a metaphor: Culture in the Web of Life, the lecture draws from Dr. Sterling's research, critically examining heritage and museums through the lens of art and ecology. Abstract and bio below. Please register here https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/scapvc/ccmps/research/beinghuman2024/annuallectureregistration

The lecture forms part of our PGR conference Being Human in the Media and Creative Industries, that will run throughout the day on 19th June. Details and registration page here.

We hope to see you there!

ECOLOGISATION IS NOT A METAPHOR: CULTURE IN THE WEB OF LIFE

Ecological thinking has long been entangled with different ideas about how to organise political, economic and social life. In the face of climate change and the environmental crisis, the urgency of thinking and acting ecologically has only intensified. Cultural actors and institutions have mobilised to address these concerns with new environmental programming, innovative sustainability strategies, and declarations of a climate and ecological emergency. This talk will argue that such shifts don't just point towards alternative ways of living on and with the planet, they also instigate a fundamental reorientation of culture in the web of life. Drawing on the work of Jason Moore, this conceptualisation recognises that – like all forms of human organisation – cultural policies and practices are always co-constituted through nature. By focusing on the evolving place of museums in this web, the talk will explore how museums have contributed to the planetary crisis through specific symbolic and material practices, but also how emerging approaches in the field might, in some small way, help to ecologise society more broadly.

Colin Sterling is Assistant Professor / Senior Lecturer in Heritage, Museums and the Environment at the University of Amsterdam, where he teaches across heritage and memory, museum studies and artistic research. Colin's research critically examines heritage and museums through the lens of art and ecology. He is the author of Heritage, Photography, and the Affective Past (Routledge, 2020) and co-editor of Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene (Open Humanities Press, 2020). He is co-editor of the journal Museums & Social Issues. 

Congratulations to SCAPVC staff for their research excellence highlighted at the Warwick Research Celebration:

Prof Nadine Holdsworth and Dr Bobby Smith presented on their Impact work, and both were nominated for Impact Awards, and Prof Nadine Holdsworth was Highly Commended for her work.

Prof Yvette Hutchison and Dr Bobby Smith were also shortlisted for postgraduate supervision from over 80- nominations.

David Wright was also nominated for fostering an inclusive research culture award.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

It is with a very heavy heart that we write to let you know that Professor Jim Davis passed away on Saturday 4th November following a stroke. Everyone who had the pleasure of encountering Jim will appreciate that this is a huge loss for his family, friends, colleagues, collaborators and the wider research community. He was a fantastic scholar and unwavering champion for the discipline and theatre historiography. He was such an important part of the Theatre and Performance family at the University of Warwick and will be missed for his leadership, mentorship, friendship and unfailing sense of fun and mischief. Jim Davis joined Warwick in 2004 as Head of Department (2004-2009) after eighteen years teaching Theatre Studies at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, where he was latterly Head of the School of Theatre, Film and Dance. In Australia he was also President of the Australasian Drama Studies Association and member of the Board of Studies of the National Institute of Dramatic Art. Prior to leaving for Australia he spent ten years teaching in London at what is now Roehampton University. He co-organised many conferences including for the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) in New South Wales and at Warwick. He convened Historiography Working Groups for both IFTR and for TaPRA. He served as an editor for the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film. He published widely and with considerable critical acclaim in the area of nineteenth-century British theatre. His most recent bookComic Acting and Portraiture in Late-Georgian and Regency England (2015) won the TaPRA David Bradby Prize for Research in International Theatre and Performance in 2017 and was shortlisted for the 2015 TLA George Freedley Memorial Award. His other publications include Theatre & Entertainment (2016), Dickensian Dramas: Plays from Charles Dickens Volume II (2017) and European Theatre Performance Practice Vol 3 1750-1900 (editor, 2014). He was also joint author of a study of London theatre audiences in the nineteenth century Reflecting the Audience: London 1840-1880 (2001), which was awarded the 2001 Theatre Book Prize. He contributed numerous chapters including essays on nineteenth-century acting to the Cambridge History of British Theatre and on audiences to the Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre. He also published many articles in Theatre Journal, Theatre Survey, Theatre Notebook, Essays in Theatre, Themes in Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, Nineteenth Century Theatre, Theatre Research International and The Dickensian. He was also responsible for many of the theatrical entries in The Oxford Readers' Companion to Dickens and contributed to the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Theatre and Performance, The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Stage Actors and Acting and the New Dictionary of National Biography. For several years he wrote an annual review of publications on nineteenth-century English Drama and Theatre for The Year's Work in English Studies. There will be an event to celebrate Jim's life in the New Year – we will post details when we know more

Autumn School for Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers

Venice, 30 September – 4 October 2024

"Dirty Queers", Dr. Bryony White's new book and her first non-fiction title, has been acquired by Serpent's Tail Press. A queer cultural history, the book has been described as "fabulously erudite", and is set to be published in Spring 2026.

Dr. Bryony White, Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies and Director of Graduate Studies at Warwick's Department of Theatre and Performance Studies, has won the 2023 TaPRA Early Career Researcher Award for her article in the Summer issue of the peer-reviewed Art Journal, 'Returning to The Scene of the Crime: Gendered and Racialized Violence in Ana Mendieta's Rape Scene'.

Jussara Belchior, Magdalena Hutter, Gillie Kleiman

Wednesday 24th May 4pm-5.30pm on MS Teams

The Fat Performance Reader is to be an edited collection of original artistic and scholarly material discussing fat performance, which we define - for the moment - as performance whose meaning-making is both predicated on fatness and can speak into a conversation about fatness. In this talk, the three editors of this collection will discuss the origins of the project, its aspirations and limitations, and the key themes that have emerged through dialogue with contributors, as well as our individual perspectives on fat performance (studies). We will continue to unpick our understandings of fat performance and its relationship to the disciplines of performance studies and fat studies, unfolding our collaboration in public.

Biographies

Jussara Belchior (Brazil)

Jussara Belchior is a fat ballerina. She also works as a choreographer, a collaborator in other artists' projects and a researcher of practices and writings in contemporary dance. Her projects deal with fat people, fatness and non-normative bodies. She has a PhD degree in Live Arts. She is currently developing the CAIBA project (Catálogo Imaterial da Baleia - Whale Immaterial Catalogue), alongside that she is a part of the MANADA and the Escrita Performativa collectives. She is interested in poetics and politics of movement and positioning yourself through dance.

Magdalena Hutter (Germany/Canada)

Magdalena is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and photographer. Her projects frequently deal with themes of belonging, ranging from documentary film to installations and interactive documentaries. In addition to her own projects, she also works as a DoP and consulting producer on other documentary films. She is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities at Concordia University in Montreal/Canada, doing research-creation about fatness in dance and developing frameworks for Fat ScreenDance.

Gillie Kleiman (United Kingdom)

Gillie Kleiman works with and in dance and choreography, creating performances, texts, events and pedagogical encounters. Gillie's work has a persistent interest in both the figure and the activity of the non-professional, and many of her projects have involved participation of non-professional collaborators or of the audience; this was the topic of her PhD project (completed in 2019). In 2020, Gillie initiated a new cycle of thinking and working about fat and fatness. Alongside her artistic practice, she is Head of Higher Education at Dance City, an adviser to Jerwood Arts, a Trustee of People Dancing, and external examiner at the Danish National School of Performing Arts. She is a member of the trade union UVW-DCW and is an accredited trade union representative. Gillie lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Fintan Walsh

Wednesday 3rd May 12pm-1.30pm on MS Teams

Grappling with extraordinary loss and its political denial, theatre and performance during the pandemic innovated forms and approaches to support the work of mourning. In particular, queer practices drew on their deep reservoirs of grief to make room for it in the bewildered present. This paper explores how some of this work intervened the social and cultural climate of the coronavirus pandemic, and how the pandemic enabled queer theatre and performance to reanimate and repurpose its own archives of loss.

If you would like to attend please email anna.six@warwick.ac.uk

Autumn School for Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers

Venice, 30 September – 4 October 2024

The Centre is proud to be hosting a Collaborative Doctoral Award, in partnership with Heritage and Culture Warwickshire, as part of the CreaTech Frontiers consortium research the barriers to digital equity in regional museums.

A national study led by Dr Vishalakshi Roy from the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy, in partnership with the National Rural Touring Forum (NRTF), is examining the wellbeing and economic contribution of volunteers involved in rural touring, an area with limited existing research and infrastructure support.

Our PhD researcher and Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant Pengyun Lu has published a new open access article in the European Journal of Cultural Studies drawing from his research into digital labour on Chinese platforms.

Heidi Ashton and David Wright reflect on the Hodge Review of Arts Council England

Autumn School for Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers

Venice, 30 September – 4 October 2024

David Herd is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose. His 2012 collection, All Just, was described by the Los Angeles Review ofBooks as 'one of the few truly necessary works of poetry written on either side of the Atlantic in the past decade'.

Through, published in 2016, was a Book of the Year in The Heraldnewspaper.

He has given readings and lectures in Europe, North America, India and Australia and has held visiting fellowships at George Mason University, Simon Fraser University and the Writing Center Gloucester, MA. He is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Kent and a co-organiser of the project Refugee Tales.

Written between 2015 and 2020, David Herd's new collection, Walk Song, weaves in and out of the Refugee Tales project. Addressing the environments contemporary politics has made, including the border and its hostilities, the poems set out the need for a language of welcome. Through its exploration of landscape and politics, friendship and movement, the book builds, across a series of poetic sequences, towards action and hope.

Eley Williams' collection of fiction Attrib. and Other Stories (2017) was awarded the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her novel The Liar's Dictionary won a 2021 Betty Trask Award, was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and listed as a Guardian Book of the Year. Her writing is published in journals and anthologies including Modern Queer Poets, The Penguin Book of the Contemporary British Short Story edited by Philip Hensher, and Liberating the Canon edited by Isabel Waidner, with stories and serialised fiction also commissioned by Radio 4. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

link here: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aJCLEwZrRntYbDixUS4rRzOxK5-_LUD0NVn5RoIEls3Q1%40thread.tacv2/1669733277733?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%2209bacfbd-47ef-4465-9265-3546f2eaf6bc%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%225ab84316-b0b9-4165-aa9a-d83c4d9b93e1%22%7d

Former Warwick Writing Programme student presents her debut novel!