The Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance at Roehampton has an established international reputation for both postgraduate teaching and research and has forged an unusually distinctive identity within the field for its investigations through cutting-edge performance practice and critical theory. We have one of the largest concentrations in the UK of staff and PhD researchers working in the area, with international reputations as performance makers, visual artists, writers, curators, critics and theoreticians, working across both cultural and academic sectors. In the 2008 rankings of UK university research quality, over 60% of staff research was graded as world-leading or internationally significant and the Department’s research culture was given the highest possible rating, indicative of international excellence.
We have a vibrant and diverse postgraduate research culture, with a unique MA/MRes programme taught by internationally acclaimed visiting artists and departmental staff, and a large community of over 35 MPhil/PhD researchers. In partnership with a range of established and emerging public venues and arts organizations, postgraduate students have many opportunities to create and present new work in an exciting range of public settings.
Whether your ambitions are in art practice or academia, you will find yourself in a vibrant, supportive and well-connected research environment with an international reputation for innovation in creative practice and research. Our work includes academic publication, curatorship and public performance, focused through the Centre for Performance and Creative Exchange, and the interdisciplinary Centre for Research in Renaissance Studies.
Highlights
An active research centre bringing together staff and students with an international reputation for innovative interdisciplinary enquiry. Recent staff research projects include monographs on the live artist Tehching Hsieh, the theatre company The New York City Players and cyborg theatre, work on performance and travel, Shakespeare and childhood, performance and Romani culture, maker and audience identities on European festival stages, as well as new radio drama for the BBC and performance, installation and workshop projects at international festivals and conferences.
Leading partner in Performance Matters, a major creative research project exploring the challenges that performance presents to ideas of cultural value. This 3-year collaboration with Goldsmith’s College and the Live Art Development Agency in London features a range of events and activities that invite artists and researchers to explore questions about the value of live and its potential to refashion understandings of what, and how, things matter in the contemporary world.
Wide-ranging contact and collaboration with leading arts organizations and venues in London and internationally, with staff and students professionally involved in a range of academic and cultural sector projects.
Opportunities to work on publication projects with the e-journal, activate, a new electronic journal and website dedicated to performance and creative research, run by a student-led editorial group.
For further details of taught postgraduate (MA/MRes) or research degrees ( MPhil/PhD), please see our Courses pages.