Philippa Burt

Dr Philippa Burt is an Associate Lecturer within the Department of Theatre and Performance, where she teaches students at all levels from undergraduate to postgraduate. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has led courses for Rose Bruford College and Colgate University, New York.

Academic qualifications

Philippa was awarded a BA in Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies (Honours) at Roehampton, University of Surrey in 2004, before completing an MA in Performance and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives and her Doctorate at Goldsmiths, both under the supervision of Professor Maria Shevtsova.

Her Doctoral thesis explored the nature of ensemble practice within the context of twentieth century British theatre, and the sociocultural, political and economic factors that undermine attempts to establish a permanent ensemble company in Britain.

Professional activities

Philippa is the Assistant Editor of New Theatre Quarterly (Cambridge University Press) and has work as a referee for Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. She was the recipient of a Harry Ransom Research Fellowship in Humanities at the University of Texas, Austin, undertaken in June 2016. As a member of the student division of the Sociology of Theatre and Performance Research Group (STPRG), led by Professor Shevtsova, she organised four international postgraduate colloquia, including The Politics of Practice (February 2012) and Culture in Crisis (May 2013). With the STPRG she has also organized a series of collaborative research seminars with postgraduate students at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Her research interests include: the sociology of the theatre; directorial processes, focusing on the work of ensemble companies; twentieth-century British theatre; the performer-spectator relationship; immersive theatre; installation art; and the problematics of social and architectural space.

Featured work

• ‘Theodore Komisarjevsky: the Russian Émigré and the London Theatre’, research paper presentation for the Anglo-Russian Research Network, Pushkin House, February 2014.
• ‘“Anton and Cleopatrovna”: Komisarjevsky’s ‘Russian’ Shakespeare productions and the reaction of the British theatre institution’, conference paper for The Politics of Practice, Goldsmiths, University of London, February 2012.
• ‘Granville Barker’s Ensemble as Model of Fabian Theatre’, conference paper for Politics, Performance and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-century Britain,University of Birmingham, July 2011. 
• ‘The Lost Legacy of Granville Barker’, conference paper for NOW, Legacies and Amnesia, Goldsmiths, University of London, February 2011.
• ‘“The actor imagines with his body”: Michael Chekhov’s Influence on the British Conception of the Performing Body’, conference paper for Bodies and Socio-Histories, Goldsmiths, University of London, February 2010.