All Blog Posts
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New Project, Please Sign Up
Hello. Happy New Year. I mentioned online, and on my Reasons to be Single blog, way back in late summer, that I had this idea for a sixteen-part weekly mail-out. In fact, the idea was to publish the book that I started back in 2014, a spin off of my Reasons to be Single Blog,…
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How is the housing crisis connected to poor service? And other questions I tried to answer on Twitter today
Another day, another Twitter row. Today I found myself embroiled in an argument about towels that, as often happens online, got way out of hand very, very quickly. It began (prepare for the least dramatic story of all time) when a woman named Holly tweeted a company called Handy, complaining that her cleaner (a contractor…
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But, Andrew Adonis, I don’t want to work hard
Over on Twitter, if you move in academic circles, you’ll almost certainly have seen a whole load of controversy over some tweets that Andrew Adonis (the former Labour politician) sent out about the state of Higher Education. To summarise: He is upset that academics have ‘three months off’ over the summer. He thinks there should…
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Housing, Activism and Performance: Call for Papers
I invite proposals for a special issue of Studies in Theatre and Performance exploring the relationship between performance, activism and housing in conditions of crisis. Please do pass this CfP on to anyone you feel might be interested in contributing. * This Housing, Activism and Performance special issue will investigate how and under what…
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Estate: A Reverie, Screening and Discussion
The University of Exeter Drama Department is hosting a free screening of Fugitive Images’ film Estate: A Reverie, please see below for details — and please share with friends and colleagues, especially those in the Devon area, who might be interested. Estate: A Reverie A film directed by Andrea Luka Zimmerman, produced by Fugitive Images Screening…
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Some Thoughts on Brexit
I am still working through my reaction to the results of the UK’s Brexit referendum. The overwhelming polemic in the aftermath, coupled with the near-hysteria during the build-up, make calm, rational, nuanced thought difficult. This is not a straightforward problem and there won’t be a straightforward solution. Those of us who voted remain are struggling to…
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Home in the Housing Crisis: Interdisciplinary Symposium
I have been working with some fantastic colleagues from Queen Mary, Birkbeck and Royal Holloway to organise an interdisciplinary symposium on home in the housing crisis. Although there is a lot of academic research into the nature of the housing crisis, and its impact on lives across the globe, these debates remain separate from considerations of…
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On Refugees, Lisa McKenzie and the Problem with Writing
The problem with writing, like the problem with speaking, is that words are limited. However articulate we are; however learned, there are only so many words, and only so many ways they can be strung together. As academics, we spend torturous hours agonising over our prose. And although we are constantly subject to accusations of…
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Date for Your Diaries. Seminar Talk on ‘Making Performance in Your Council Estate Home’
I am the speaker at the December seminar for the Institute of Historical Research ‘Studies of Home’ series. 2nd December 2015, 5.30pm, Senate House, London. ‘The Resident Artist: Making Performance in Your Council Estate Home’. Put it in your diaries! Check out the exciting seminar line-up for the rest of the year by clicking here.
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Ruin Lust and the Council Estate
Over the past couple of years I have attempted to develop my approach to performance research by thinking about the ways in which my personal experiences feed into my reading of plays, and my writing about them. For me this is a political act. Far too much performance scholarship still fails to explicitly acknowledge the…
Katie Beswick 