Professor in Theatre and Performance; Director of Global Engagement, Department Communications, Drama and Film

I joined the University of Exeter in 2017 after twelve years at Aberystwyth University, where I was a core member of the team that made Aberystwyth an internationally renowned centre for Performance Studies.

I have published widely on contemporary performance practice, the history of performance art in a British context, performance historiography and archiving, performance and landscape, and performance as a mode of knowledge formation and dissemination.

For over a decade, the focus of my research has been on the history and historiography of performance art in the 1960s and 1970s. This research was funded by a Large Research Grant from the British Arts and Humanities Research Council AHRC (2009-2011) and won the UK’s Theatre and Performance Research Association TaPRA David Bradby Award for Outstanding Research in International Theatre and Performance 2011. I am currently working on a book arising from the enquiry with the working title When Yoko Ono did not come to Wales - Locating the early history of Performance Art.

Current and future projects include research on the participation of children in experimental performance work of the 1960s and 1970s and its relationship to child activism in the period (The Avant-garde is Child's Play); a project on sound documents of performance art (Toward an Aural History of Performance Art); and a joint project (with Professor Gavin Butt, Northumbria University) on the development of performance art in the context of art schools in the UK (Live Class: Performance and the Art School). [for additional research interests see: Research]

I am a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA); a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA); and a member of the AHRC Peer Review College - Academic. I was an Arts Associate (formerly National Advisor) to the Arts Council of Wales until recently, and I serve on the board of several arts organisations and academic journals.

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Postal address: Professor Heike Roms, Drama, University of Exeter, Thornlea, New North Road, Exeter EX4 4LA, UK

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Biography:

Before joining the University of Exeter in 2017, I was Professor of Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University (2005-2017) and Lecturer in Theatre and Media Drama at Glamorgan University (2002-2005). I received my PhD in 2001 from the University of Wales Aberystwyth, following a Masters (Magister Artium M.A.) in Literature, German philology and Musicology from Hamburg University. Between 1985 and 1995 I worked for various theatre organisations in Germany, as dramaturg, production manager and head of press and publicity for organisations such as the Kampnagelfabrik Hamburg, the Internationales Sommertheater Festival Hamburg and the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen. Following this, I worked for three years as research administrator for the University of Wales to help establish Performance Studies international, the main membership association in the field.

Research supervision:

I have supervised 14 PhD projects to successful completion (many of them funded by scholarships, including 2 projects supported by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award), on subjects such as the performance lecture, journeys as aesthetic practice, the use of GPS in performance, located art practice, the performance of lament, digital notation, queer approaches to archiving, curating historical performance art in museums. ritual performativity, and the history of alternative theatre in the UK. I have examined 36 PhDs, including for Murdoch University and Deakin University (both Australia) and the universities of Bristol, Coventry, Glasgow, Leeds Beckett, Plymouth, Queen Mary University of London, Reading, Roehampton, Royal Holloway, South Wales, Ulster, Wales Trinity Saint David, Warwick, Northumbria, West of England, Arts University Bournemouth, Central School of Speech and Drama, Bartlett School of Architecture and Chelsea College of Art.

I welcome applications from prospective research students in any area of my research expertise (including practice-based research). I am especially happy to consider working with candidates with interests in the history and historiography of performance art and related experimental practices; oral history and performance; teaching performance; space and identity in contemporary performance; and related areas.