Theatre & Performance Studies News
In Memoriam - Professor Jim Davis
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.
An event to celebrate Jim’s life and work was held on 6 January 2024 12pm-4pm in the Studios in the Faculty of Arts Building on the University of Warwick's campus.
Congratulations to Dr Goran Petrović-Lotina who has been awarded the WIRL-COFUND (GRP Global Governance) Fellowship
His postdoctoral topic is Performance and Populism.
Dr Julia Peetz awarded Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship 2019
We are delighted to announce that Dr Julia Peetz will be joining us as one of the Eleven young researchers selected to help Warwick deliver ambitious research strategy
Dr Peetz will undertake the first major study of the performative dimension of Anglo-American relations, combining archival research and performance analysis to expand the emerging interdisciplinary field of politics and performance research.
Warwick announces new £10 million Warwick Scholars programme for up to 500 Midlands young people each year
The University of Warwick announced today (Tuesday 14th May 2019) a transformational new £10 million social mobility programme - Warwick Scholars - that aims to change the lives of hundreds of Midlands young people who have the potential to study at Warwick, one of the world’s top 100 ranked universities, but who may face social or economic barriers to entering Warwick.
Professor Nadine Holdsworth awarded £9000 from the University's HEIF Impact Fund to support a project with the National Maritime Museum
Congratulations to Professor Nadine Holdsworth who has been awarded £9000 from the University's HEIF Impact Fund to support a project with the National Maritime Museum called 'Maritime Creativity: From Archive to Exhibition'.