Gemma is an active member of the following organisations:
- Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR)
- The German Society for Contemporary Drama in English (CDE) Regional Studies Association (RSA)
Gemma’s research explores the relationships between place, politics, and performance. She is particularly interested in non-metropolitan contexts and economies of production, as well as the dramatic representation of regional and rural communities and lives. Combining methodologies from cultural geography and political philosophy, her analysis of plays and performances is thoroughly interdisciplinary and is grounded by an awareness of the politics of place.
Gemma’s next research project examines the connections between labour, health, and performance across industrial workplaces in the East Midlands, with a particular focus on her home county of Nottinghamshire. The aim here is to explore how radical cultural histories might help to shape the cultural futures of these places at a time when their post-industrial identities and economies are increasingly contested.
This attention to the cultural production of post-industrial regional place underpins her second monograph, Is This England: Staging Class, Race, and Nation since 1945, which seeks to decentralise the post-war English theatre record through focusing on work that addresses class-race intersections in regional contexts of production. Gemma’s earlier work explored the politics of the rural as both a lived space and cultural imaginary, and this is seen in her monograph, Representing the Rural (2023), and several essays and journal articles.
Gemma invites PhD inquiries situated in the field of modern and contemporary theatre and performance, as well as explorations into regional literary cultures.
She has worked with a range of cultural organisations, including New Perspectives Theatre Company, The Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, and The National Theatre.
