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Communications, Drama and Film

Drama research

We research a wide range of performance practices, from popular and experimental theatre forms to everyday cultural activities analysed as performance. We have a well-established reputation for excellence in theatre history, contemporary performance practice, performer training, applied theatre and community performance. 

 We work through creative practice, historiography, politically and socially engaged research, ethnography and transdisciplinary collaboration. We have a particular interest in understanding the marginalizations and exclusions of British theatre cultures and industries; Asian performance cultures and diasporic practices; and the cultural aspects of contemporary concerns such as climate crisis, healthcare and urbanization, space and rurality. 

 We are a mutually supportive community of staff and postgraduate students, committed to high ethical standards and to challenging reliance on colonial, patriarchal, classed and gender-based hierarchies. 

Practice Research at Exeter has included projects exploring space, place and the city, activism, performer training, medical humanities and decolonisation.

Find out more about practice research.

Whether your research interest concerns performance analysis, ethnographic methods, historical research or theatre practice, we are on hand to support you successfully throughout your PhD.

Find out more about postgraduate research.