Dr Yangzi Zhou
About Me
I currently split my time among three roles: as a Doctoral Training Programmes Coordinator, I support UKRI-funded doctoral research through the Centre for Arts Doctoral Research Excellence (CADRE/M4C) and the ESRC Midlands Graduate School (MGS). As a CADRE Workshop Facilitator, I provide training in academic and non-academic skills for PGRs in the arts and humanities. As an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Study, I have remained research active with three ongoing projects based on my PhD, postdoctoral, and collaborative research. From 2024 to 2025, I held a competitively awarded IATL/IAS Early Career Teaching Fellowship, during which I was part of the team developing interdisciplinary pedagogies and modules at the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning. Between 2022 and 2024, I taught in Theatre and Performance Studies and the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies.
I completed my PhD in Theatre Studies in November 2024, under the supervision of Dr Steve Purcell (ECLS) and Dr Tim White (TPS). Central to my research is how different modes of media and artistic forms work with and against each other to shape our cultural and emotional lives. My doctoral project, entitled 'Live Is Elsewhere: Mapping Theatreness in National Theatre Live', concerns how mainstream theatre broadcasting programmes like NT Live reconstruct encounters with theatre for the screen. Other fields of interest include affect theory (especially the cultural representation and politics of negative affects), narratives of diaspora and immigration on stage and screen, intermediality, and adaptation studies.
Publications
Peer-reviewed articles:
‘“The Closest and the Farthest Away”: Telling Intermedial Spatial Stories in National Theatre Live – the Case of Julius Caesar’. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 19.3 (2023): 296-317 DOI: 10.1080/14794713.2023.2196874.
‘On the Theatrical Possibility of the Affective Turn in Happy Days’. Journal of Nanjing University (Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences) 59.6(2022): 101-10.
'"The Impossible Balancing Act": Reconstructing Liveness with NT Live's Hedda Gabler'. Adaptation 14.3(2021): 416-34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/adaptation/apaa002.
'A Carnival with Restraint: Deconstruction of National Identity in Cloud Nine'. Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism 12.1 (2019): 81-96.
Book Chapters:
'Affects in Theatre'. Frontiers of Contemporary Theatre Theories in the West: Volume 2 (Nanjing: Nanjing University Press).
'Theatrical Community and the Emancipated Spectator'. Frontiers of Contemporary Theatre Theories in the West: Volume 2 (Nanjing: Nanjing University Press).
Conference Papers:
‘Contemporaneity as (Inter)national Issue: NT Live Broadcasts of Ivo van Hove’s Work’. Screening Live Performance, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, July 2025.
'Performing Unfeeling: East and Southeast Asian Migration on Stage and Screen'. IAS Research Share, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, May 2025.
‘To leave is to be: Ibsen’s Nora and the East Asian female experience on screen’. The Intermedial Ibsen, the XVth International Ibsen Conference, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, June 2024.
‘The (un)feeling edge of intermedial dramaturgy: organisation of the affective experience in two NT Live productions’. Dimensions of Dramaturgy, 6th EASTAP Conference, Aarhus University, Denmark, June 2023.
'Spatial Stories in the Intermedial Dramaturgy of National Theatre Live: A Streetcar Named Desire'. Postgraduate Symposium in Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick, October 2022.
'“The Closest and the Farthest Away”: National Theatre Live and the Promise of Intermedial Spatial Practice'. Digital Sustainability: From Resilience to Transformation, DRHA 2022, Kingston School of Art, London, UK, September 2022.
'National Theatre Live and the Debates of Intermedial Spatial Practice: the Case of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2019)'. Redirections: capturing emergent research practices in response to precarity, TaPRA Online Postgraduate Symposium, June 2022 (virtual).
'Intermedial Spatial Practice in National Theatre Live'. Global Snapshot: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Media, Performativity, and Global Communities, University of California, Santa Barbara, May 2022 (virtual).
'Ugly Feelings in Happy Days: the Ecological Possibility of Affective Spectatorship'. IFTR Annual Conference, Galway, Ireland, July 2021 (virtual).
'"Something Must be Fixed On": Observation, Romanticism, and Morality in Mansfield Park'. Undergraduate Humanities Research Conference, Duke Kunshan University, April 2019.
'Deconstruction of National Identity in Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9'. 7th International Undergraduate Conference, Beijing Foreign Studies University, September 2018.
Conference Organisation:
Organising Committee Member, 'Locations of (Dis)embodied Labour in Theatre and Performance', University of Warwick, November 2023
Organiser, Postgraduate Symposium in Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick, October 2022 (with Prodosh Bhattacharya and Varvara Sklez)
Panel Chair, 'Theatre Histories', Postgraduate Symposium in Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Warwick, July 2021 (virtual).
Teaching
Warwick Summer School:
Global Connections: Institutions, Mobilities and Cultures
Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning:
IL 905 Thinking Water
IL102 Navigating Psychopathology
Interdisciplinary Skills Sessions: Interdisciplinary Academic Writing
Theatre and Performance Studies:
TH114 Theatre and Performance in Context
TH256 Adapting Shakespeare for Performance
English and Comparative Literary Studies:
EN2D8/EN3D8 European Theatre
Awards and Honours
2024 Humanities Research Fund for attending the XVth International Ibsen Conference
2023 Humanities Research Centre Conference Funding
2023 Humanities Research Centre Visiting Speaker's Fund
2023 Humanities Research Fund for attending the 6th EASTAP Annual Conference
2019 Greta Burkill Fund for Postgraduates, Peterhouse, Cambridge
Qualifications
PhD in Theatre Studies (Warwick)
MPhil in Criticism and Culture (Cantab.)
BA in English Literature (Nanjing)
Associate Fellowship, Advance HE (AFHEA)
Undergraduate Study-abroad Scheme (Sheffield)
Service
Peer Reviewer: Theatre Research International; International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media
Theatre and Performance Studies PGR Representative for Student-Staff Liaison Committee (2021-2023)