Profile
I grew up in Greece where I completed a BA in Theatre Studies at the University of Athens before moving to Britain for MA in Research at Royal Holloway. My PhD on theatre and national identity (RHUL) was funded by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation. During my PhD years, I started teaching at Royal Holloway. Later, I held a year-long lectureship at University College Dublin and for a decade, I was Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Winchester. I joined Central in January 2020.
I specialise in shifting manifestations of European identities, researching politics and feelings of Europeanness across diverse examples (including new writing, visual arts, and popular performance). I am currently completing Encountering Europe on British Stages (Bloomsbury), a monograph that examines the politics of imagining European identities in British theatre from the end of the Cold War until the immediate period after the 2016 EU referendum.
My family background and my experiences as a migrant have shaped my research and teaching approach to questions of identity, displacement and belonging. I often refer to my ‘inside/outside’ perspective as both a hindrance and a privilege and I am committed to creating and working in spaces of encounter and collaboration. One such space was the Inside/Outside Europe Research Network, that I co-convened (2013-16); this collective of Early Career Researchers was set up to investigate performances of crises and crisis as performance in 21st century Europe. Performances of Capitalism, Crises and Resistance (Palgrave 2015) documents some of our research trajectory.
I have presented my research in various international conferences and have been invited to give keynotes at Central St Martin’s, Nottingham Trent/Bonnington Gallery, Berlin’s Akademie der Kunste and the University of Barcelona.
I have been a member of the Performance, Identity, Community Working Group of Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) since its early years. I was one of the WG convenors (2010-13) and served as Secretary of the association’s Executive Committee (2014-18). Since 2014, I have been a member of an experts’ panel for the evaluation and accreditation of Theatre Studies university departments in Greece. I am one of the editors of the peer-reviewed international journal Studies in Theatre and Performance.
Areas of Expertise
- Performance and cultural politics
- Performance and migration
- Theatre and post-1989 European identities
- Politics of performance and representation
- Post-war and contemporary British theatre
- Migratory routes and theatre histories
- Dramaturgy
- Research Methodologies
- 20th and 21st century Greek theatre
PhD Supervision
To date, I have supervised 2 PhD thesis to completion and externally examined 2 more in areas including migration and dramaturgy. I am currently supervising or interested in supervising doctoral projects, particularly in the areas of migration and performance; theatre and European identities and contemporary British theatre and politics.
Key Publications
Co-Edited Journal Special Issue
2021. (co-edited with Glenn Odom) ‘Towards Decentring Theatre and Performance Studies’ Studies in Theatre and Performance 41.1
Co-Edited Volume
2015. (co-edited with Philip Hager) Performances of Capitalism, Crises and Resistance: Inside/Outside Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan)
Articles
2021. ‘Editorial: Taking a snapshot of theatre and performance studies’ Studies in Theatre and Performance 41.1, pp. 1-11. DOI: 10.1080/14682761.2021.1881271
2018. ‘Performing that which exceeds us: aesthetics of sincerity and obscenity during “the refugee crisis”’, RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 23 (2): 179-92. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569783.2018.1439735
2017. ‘“What Is Our Motherland?” Performing “Time out of Joint” at the National Theatre of Greece’, Journal of Greek Media and Culture, 3 (2): 195- 201. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgmc.3.2.195_1
2017. (co-authored with Philip Hager) ‘Performances de la volonté et de la liberté à Athènes (2010-2015)’ [in French], Théâtre/Public 222 : Scènes en transition – Balkans et Grèce.
2016. ‘The Invisible Other in Excess: (Dis)Placing Europe in Simon Stephens’s Three Kingdoms’, Contemporary Theatre Review 26(3): 357-64. https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2016.1183664
2016. ‘“I am Blankness Out of Which Emerges Only Darkness”: Impressions and Aporias of Multiculturalism in The Events’, Contemporary Theatre Review 26 (1), 71-81. https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2015.1121143
2016. (co-authored with Emma Cox) ‘Mare Nostrum, or On Water Matters’, Performance Research On/At Sea, 21 (2): 141-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2016.1175724
Book Chapters
2019. ‘After the EU referendum: When theatre tries to do something’ in The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics, ed. by Peter Eckersall and Helena Grehan, (London and New York: Routledge).
2015. ‘At the Gates of Europe: Sacred Objects, Other Spaces and Performances of Dispossession’, Performances of Capitalism, Crises and Resistance: Inside/Outside Europe, ed. by Marilena Zaroulia and Philip Hager (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 193- 210.
2014. ‘“Members of a Chorus of a Certain Tragedy”: Euripides’ Orestes, National Theatre of Greece’, Theatre and National Identity: Re-imagining Conceptions of Nation, ed. by Nadine Holdsworth (London and New York: Routledge), 200-20.
Register of Interest
Nothing to declare.