Maria Shevtsova - Biography#

Full CV

Maria Shevtsova has previously held Chairs at the Universities of Connecticut (Modern and Classical Languages) and Lancaster (Founding Chair of Contemporary Performance and Theatre Studies), was Director of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Sydney, and has also taught at the University of Paris. She was an invited Visiting Professor at various institutions, including the Teatro Ateneo and the University of Rome, the University of Oslo and the Academy of Theatre Arts of St. Petersburg. She has guest-lectured and given master seminars extensively abroad – in China, France and Australia and, among others, at the Universities of Copenhagen and Turin. Her permanent and invited positions reflect her international and interdisciplinary approach to theatre / performance and the teaching profession. She studied at the University of Sydney, the Institut d'Etudes Théâtrales, l'Université de Paris III and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), also in Paris.

An elected member (1996-2004) of the Executive Committee of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT), she also served as the Chair of the IFTR New Scholars' Prize from 1997-2002. She was Secretary-Treasurer and editor of the Newsletter of the Research Committee 37 Sociology of the Arts of the International Sociological Association (ISA, 1990-1994) and the Vice-President of this Research Committee from 1994-1998.

She is a member of the research team of the Centre de functions imaginaires et sociales des arts at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, of the Equipe de Recherche en Scénologie, l'Université de Paris VIII, and is the founding director of the Sociology of Theatre and Performance Research Group. She is an invited theatre critic at the annual Golden Mask National Theatre Award and Festival in Moscow and at the Aleksandrinsky Theatre's International Theatre Festival in St. Petersburg. She is co-editor of the prestigious international journal New Theatre Quarterly published by Cambridge University Press, and on the Editorial Board of Critical Stages, the journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics, and of various other international journals, including Polish Theatre Perspectives.

At Goldsmiths, Shevtsova is the founder and director of the MA Performance and Culture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, and, until 2011, was Director of Research and Graduate Studies of the Department of Theatre and Performance, member of the Board of Goldsmiths' Graduate School and of the Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee. She founded and leads the Conversations Series where her invited guests for public interview and discussion have included Eugenio Barba, Lev Dodin, Declan Donnellan, and Jaroslaw Fret of Teatr ZAR. She is in workshop collaboration with the Barbican Centre in London for which she also conducts post- and pre-show talks and writes programme articles. Her publications have been translated into Romanian, Russian, Polish, Korean, Chinese (Mandarin) and Persian.