Research

Two women in high heels and knee-length dresses on a stage with their calves projected onto a screen.

Firmly located in Wales, and with an established international profile across its constituent disciplines, the Department foregrounds research and study of regional, national and international significance in theatre, film, performance and media within a globalised cultural environment.

Research in Theatre Film and Television Studies (TFTS) foregrounds the study of theatre, film, performance and media within historically, geographically and politically located cultural contexts. It emphasises formal innovation, technological developments and interdisciplinary enquiry.

We are playwrights, performers, theatre directors, scenographers, filmmakers, curators, media communicators and academics working at the intersection of theory and practice. We are involved in a range of exciting creative collaborations, both nationally and internationally.

Research Themes and Current Projects

Click here to see our Research Themes & Projects.

Research Events

As part of our commitment to producing and sharing new and innovative research, we host numerous research events every year. Our ongoing series of research seminars allows postgraduate students, staff and distinguished speakers – including both academics and artists – from other universities to share and develop their ongoing research in a constructive and supportive environment.

These seminars are open to any students and staff within and outside the university. Most of these talks are free to attend and most are recorded. Therefore, if you find an upcoming event that interests you please come along.

Find out more about our upcoming events

For a list of our previous events, please go to the Previous Research Events webpage.

The Centre for Material Thinking

The Centre for Material Thinking (CMT) was launched in November 2021 (with an inaugural lecture by Prof Carrie Noland of the University of California, Irvine). Housed in TFTS and co-led by Dr Kim Knowles and Miranda Whall, it brings together several key research strands both within the Department and across the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS).

The CMT aims to stimulate interdisciplinary research embedded in questions of materiality, matter and making. It responds particularly to the recent ‘material turn’ in both academic disciplines and artistic practice, which has given rise to new embodied ways of thinking about and relating to the world. From our patterns of consumption and disposal, social rituals and political affiliations, to our techniques of representation and modes of production, human behaviour is determined by a complex web of physical interrelations. The Covid-19 pandemic has thrown into relief many material relations that have previously either been taken for granted or simply ignored, and questions of space and place, communication and education, ecology and environment are now being reassessed from different perspectives. 

The CMT is interested in creative responses to these questions, pursuing a range of theoretical and practice-based avenues for exploring how materiality matters in a contemporary context. How do we make meaning from matter and how do material entanglements determine the way we inhabit the world? How can new modes of representation bring about a greater awareness of the earthly problems and ecological crises that we must now negotiate as part of our daily lives? What role can the arts and humanities play in communicating the broader social and political implications of materiality? What new modes of understanding are opened up through creative explorations of materiality and physicality, both human and non-human? Implicit in these questions is the acknowledgement that traditional humanist paradigms are inadequate for our times, and that a deeper understanding of what Jane Bennett calls ‘vibrant matter’ is necessary for establishing more ethical ways of being.  

Please visit the Centre’s dedicated website for more information about our research projects, past and upcoming events, and ongoing artist commissions: www.materialthinking.net

Or email: material-thinking@aber.ac.uk if you would like to get in touch.

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