Professor Helen Gilbert

My primary academic interest lies in the theatre of marginalised cultures. Over the last two decades, my research has spanned texts and performances drawn from diverse parts of the world, with special emphasis on contemporary theatre in Australasia, Canada and the Caribbean. Thematically, my work concentrates on issues relating to race and representation, indigeneity, cultural identity, nationalism, democracy and the politics and aesthetics of cross-cultural engagement. My recent major project, Performance and Cosmopolitics (with Jacqueline Lo), investigated the influences of Aboriginal and Asian theatre practices in Australasia, examining aesthetic, commercial, political and ethical dimensions of their incorporation within regional cultures. In 2006–2008, I ran a transnational AHRC-funded network on performance and asylum, and continue to research in the related field of performative engagements with terrorism.

I am currently leading a five-year, multi-national, team-based project titled ‘Indigeneity in the Contemporary World’, which takes an interdisciplinary approach to indigenous performance across the Americas, the Pacific and South Africa. Focus issues include global justice, belonging, commodity culture, heritage and reconciliation. Theoretically, my work attempts to extend postcolonial analytical models to better account for performative praxis. In this endeavour, I’ve drawn from an eclectic range of scholars including Edward Said, Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, Helen Tiffin, Homi Bhabha, Joseph Roach, Diana Taylor and Rustom Bharucha. I’m passionate about interdisciplinary research and will soon finish a co-authored book on scientific, popular and literary representations of orangutans. I Direct the Drama Department’s Centre for International Theatre and Performance Research and co-convene Royal Holloway’s cross-faculty Postcolonial Research Group.