Professor Maria Shevtsova PhD (Sydney), M-ès-L (Paris), BA Dip.Ed
Maria Shevtsova has previously held Chairs at the Universities of Connecticut (Modern and Classical Languages) and Lancaster (Founding Chair of Contemporary Performance and Theatre Studies), was Director of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Sydney, and has also taught at the University of Paris. She was an invited Visiting Professor at various institutions, including the Teatro Ateneo and the University of Rome, the University of Oslo and the Academy of Theatre Arts of St. Petersburg. She has guest-lectured and given master seminars extensively abroad – in China, France and Australia and, among others, at the Universities of Copenhagen and Turin. Her permanent and invited positions reflect her international and interdisciplinary approach to theatre / performance and the teaching profession. She studied at the University of Sydney, the Institut d'Etudes Théâtrales, l'Université de Paris III and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), also in Paris.
An elected member (1996-2004) of the Executive Committee of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT), she also served as the Chair of the IFTR New Scholars' Prize from 1997-2002. She was Secretary-Treasurer and editor of the Newsletter of the Research Committee 37 Sociology of the Arts of the International Sociological Association (ISA, 1990-1994) and the Vice-President of this Research Committee from 1994-1998.
She is a member of the research team of the Centre de functions imaginaires et sociales des arts at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, of the Equipe de Recherche en Scénologie, l'Université de Paris VIII, and is the founding director of the Sociology of Theatre and Performance Research Group. She is an invited theatre critic at the annual Golden Mask National Theatre Award and Festival in Moscow and at the Aleksandrinsky Theatre's International Theatre Festival in St. Petersburg. She is co-editor of the prestigious international journal New Theatre Quarterly published by Cambridge University Press.
At Goldsmiths, Shevtsova is the founder and director of the MA Performance and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Director of Research and Graduate Studies of the Department of Drama, member of the Board of Goldsmiths' Graduate School and of the Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee. She founded and leads the Conversations Series where her invited guests for public interview and discussion have included Eugenio Barba, Lev Dodin and Declan Donnellan. She is in workshop collaboration with the Barbican Centre in London for which she also conducts post- and pre-show talks and writes programme articles.
Research interests
Maria Shevtsova's interrelated areas of research encompass her continuing work on Russian and French theatre and on such European directors and companies as Lev Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre of St. Petersburg, Ariane Mnouchkine and the Théâtre du Soleil, and Peter Brook and the CICT. Her close relationship with contemporary theatre directors and dancers (she has a dance background and has worked as a dance reviewer) sustains her research on a wide range of performance, including dance, opera and hybrid forms, and in performance analysis. A specialist in social and cultural theory and the problematics of sociocultural contextualisation in respect of performance, she has developed the theoretical foundations and interdisciplinary methodologies of the sociology of the theatre. She also works on cross-culturalism and issues to do with ethnicity, immigration, multiculturalism and globalisation.Selected publications
Selected Recent publications
Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre: Process to Performance, London: Routledge, 2004.
Fifty Key Theatre Directors, co-ed. with Shomit Mitter, London: Routledge, 2005 (Shevtsova's entries – Jean Vilar, Ariane Mnouchkine, Patrice Chéreau, Giorgio Strehler, Luca Ronconi, Lev Dodin, Peter Sellars, Pina Bausch, Declan Donnellan)
Jean Genet: Performance and Politics, co-ed., London: Palgrave Macmillan 2006 (with her essay, 'The Theatre of Genet in Sociological Perspective', pp. 44-53)
Robert Wilson, London: Routledge, 2007
Editor (with Dan Urian) of the focus issue The Sociology of the Theatre for Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 12, No. 3. (2002)
'Appropriating Pierre Bourdieu's Champ and Habitus for a Sociology of Stage Productions', The Sociology of the Theatre as above, pp. 35-60
'Robert Wilson Directs When We Dead Awaken, The Lady From the Sea and Peer Gynt', Ibsen Studies 7:1 (2007), pp. 84-104
'Multiculturalism, Theatre and the Politics of Liberation: The Melbourne Workers Theatre and the Turkish Community' in Class Act: Melbourne Workers Theatre 1987-2007, ed. Glenn D'Cruz, Melbourne: the Vulgar Press, 2007, pp. 88-103