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Staff Profile

Professor Jo Robinson

Head of School

Background

Role in the School

As Head of the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, I work with an engaged and inspiring group of colleagues who are committed to delivering excellence in learning and teaching and research across the breadth of literature, language and linguistics and creative writing.

Biography

BA (Hons) Jurisprudence (Balliol College, Oxford)

MA English Literature (University of Warwick)

PhD English Literature (University of Warwick)

Current member of the AHRC's Peer Review College (to 2023)

Member of TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association) and IFTR (International Federation of Theatre Research)

Expertise

As Professor of Theatre and Performance, my areas of research expertise are theatre history and historiography, and nineteenth and twentieth/twenty-first century theatre and performance with a particular focus on the relationships between place, space, community and region. I also have a key interest in digital humanities as broadly conceived, both in terms of digital historiographies and working with augmented reality to enhance the accessibility of live performance.

I regularly engage in collaborative projects with creative industries, libraries and heritage organisations. I am keen to develop collaborative partnerships for others too: to date I have supervised four collaborative doctoral award students working with Nottingham Playhouse Roundabout, New Perspectives Theatre Company, the British Library and Oxford Lieder.

I am also experienced in developing innovative practice and research in teaching and learning, with a particular focus on assessment and feedback and employability and engagement opportunities for students at all stages of their learning journey.


Research

My own research focuses on the histories and practice of regional theatre and performance: I have long worked to try to fill in the gaps where existing histories neglect the importance of local and regional practices, both within cities and in rural communities. Key publications here include Theatre & the Rural (2016) and my earlier provocation 'Becoming More Provincial: the global and the local in theatre history' (New Theatre Quarterly, 2007).

My research also focuses on the ways in which the methods that we use to research and share those stories can shape our knowledge. This has led to key innovations in research practice, from early digital collaborations with geography colleagues to map and explore mid-nineteenth-century performance culture in Nottingham (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, 2006-2009), to more recent work with communities of citizen scholars in Nottingham to co-research and co-curate the history of the city’s Theatre Royal and other local cultural institutions. Projects funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and an AHRC Follow on Funding for Impact and Engagement Award have developed a sustainable model of archive development and volunteer engagement for heritage and literary venues in the city and wider region, with support from Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature. See ourtheatreroyal.org for a key output from this research, and citizenscholar.org.uk for an overview of my wider activity with different organisations.

Two co-edited publications with Claire Cochrane, Theatre History and Historiography: Ethics, Evidence and Truth (2016) and The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography (2019) reflect my interests in historiographic method.

My focus on relationships between performance and audience have also led me to work with different regional creative industry partners – most recently working with colleagues from languages and computer science at the University of Nottingham to develop and deploy new models of immersive and inclusive captioning for theatre in collaboration with Red Earth Theatre Company. This project, funded by an AHRC/EPSRC Next Generation of Immersive Experiences grant and AHRC Follow on Funding for Impact and Engagement, has explored the potential of New projection mapping software  alongside traditional theatre projection systems to make captioning part of the artistic design of the show using any part of the set, props and even actors themselves. The first production to showcase this creative way to display the words and sounds of a show was the epic Arctic adventure story, Soonchild by Russell Hoban, adapted for the stage by Red Earth Theatre. Find out more about this project here.

My first collaboration in Newcastle will be with Open Clasp, co-supervising a Northern Bridge DTP student who will be helping to develop new models for evaluating the impact of the company’s important work with women and girls.  

Teaching

Learning and Teaching

I am passionate about excellence in learning and teaching, and supporting an inclusive and welcoming student community within the School.

I am focused on developing excellent and innovative practice and research in teaching and learning, with particular focus on assessment and feedback and work related learning. In my previous role at the University of Nottingham I was awarded a Lord Dearing Teaching Award: the nomination, made by a student, recognised 'the real confidence, motivation and ambition encouraged in students by way of outstanding attention to individuals'. In 2017 I was Runner Up in Best All-Rounder category in the University of Nottingham Students' Union Staff Oscars.

I have headed the following projects designed to enhance student experience and opportunities:

 

Research supervision

My areas of expertise for supervision of research are theatre history and historiography; theories of reception and the study of audiences; the digital humanities, and nineteenth and twentieth/twenty-first century theatre and performance with a particular focus on the relationships between place, space and community.

My recent and current research students include:

  • Andy Barrett, Artistic Director of Excavate, a community and participatory arts company in the East Midlands, who is working on the role of the playwright in the creation of community plays.
  • Gemma Edwards, holder of a Midlands4Cities doctoral studentship, working on her thesis project: 'Representing the rural: new rural imaginaries on the twenty-first century British stage'.
  • Laura de Simoni, who is working on theatrical dystopias.
  • Stewart Campbell, who is a Midlands4Cities student at the University of Birmingham, working on a collaborative doctoral project with Oxford Lieder.

Previous research students include:

  • Gill Brigg, holder of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, who completed her collaborative project with the Nottingham Playhouse, 'Performance for audiences with profound and multiple learning difficulties: performances & reception'
  • Soudabeh Ananisarab, whose thesis, 'George Bernard Shaw and the English Midlands', focused on Shaw's involvement with the Malvern Festival. Soudabeh is now Lecturer in Drama at Birmingham City University.
  • Tilly Branson, holder of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award with New Perspectives Theatre Company for her project 'Re-imagining the rural tour', Tilly is a director and dramaturg and sits on the board of Pentabus Theatre.
  • Hannah Manktelow, holder of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership award from the British Library, whose thesis focused on 'Provincial Shakespeares'. Hannah is currently Project Officer for TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities).
  • Sam Haddow, who worked on historiographic drama in the context of debates around history and postmodernity, and is now Lecturer in Theatre at the University of St Andrews
  • Heather Lilley, who worked on Community and Negotiations of Audience-Performance Relationships in the Theatre of Cartoon de Salvo, Kneehigh Theatre and Northern Stage, and is now Senior Lecturer in Drama at Anglia Ruskin University
  • Jill Sullivan, who worked on The Business of Pantomime in Nineteenth Century Nottingham and Birmingham, and is now Archives Assistant at the Bristol University Theatre Collection.
  • Tracy Cruickshank, now Associate Head of School of Arts/Head of Drama at De Montfort University.


Publications