Dr Caoimhe Mader McGuinness
Faculties, departments and locations
- Kingston School of Art
- Department of Performing Arts
- School of Arts
- Penrhyn Road
Senior Lecturer in Drama
- Email:
- [email protected]
About
I am a senior lecturer and Course Leader of the BA Drama at Kingston. I have also taught on the Humanities Foundation and MA in English, as well as across London at Birkbeck, Queen Mary, Goldsmiths and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. My teaching specialisms are grounded in critical and historical considerations of drama, theatre and performance and how to activate these through writing and performance. Specific topics explored in my classes are empire, gender, sexuality and disability as they are treated through performance and how this can make us think in turn about broader social, economic and political contexts.
My research and publications look at the politics of spectatorship, criticism and institutions of contemporary culture, theatre and live art through a Marxist, feminist, queer and post-colonial lens. I broadly focus on the specific histories of Western imperialism and its afterlives as these apply to cultural production and reception in contemporary Britain and France in their relationships to the state in particular. Further interests are protest, social reproduction in feminist performance, the 1951 Festival of Britain and Marxist approaches to theatre and performance.
My monograph, which compares the 1951 Festival of Britain and 2022's Unboxed Festival in how these speak to similarities and differences in conceptions of the British state, empire and identity, is due out in October 2025. I am also developing a collaborative project on 'Cartoon Theatre' with Dr Maggie Gray and a personal research project on French colonial aphasia and its cultural manifestations in a historical and contemporary global context.
- Course Leader Drama
- Joint Research Officer: Awards for the Theatre and Performance Research Association
- Joint Working Group Convenor 'Performance Economies' International Federation for Theatre Research:
- London Theatre Seminar Organising Committee
- Editorial Board of Studies in Theatre and Performance
Qualifications
- PhD in Drama, Queen Mary University of London 2017
- MA in Theatre and Performance, Queen Mary University of London 2010
- BA in Drama and Theatre Arts, Goldsmiths College University of London 2009
- Baccalauréat , Lycée Expérimental de St Nazaire 2000
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
Domains
Qualifications
- Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy
Course director
Courses taught
My research is currently organised around four separate but interlinked topics.
My single authored publications and my doctoral thesis explore questions of racialised and gendered representations in performance, often in their intersection with protest, censorship and the role of the British liberal state both present and historical. This informs the current Cambridge Elements Monograph I am writing for Cambridge University Press, drawing on these reflections as they interlink with energy extraction and the climate crisis through an investigation of the links between identity and extractive practices in the 1951 Festival of Britain and 2022 Unboxed (colloquially known as 'The Festival of Brexit').
I am also a part of the Performance and Political Economy research collective, a group exploring the relationship between Marxist political economies and performance practices as these pertain to a wide range of topics such as struggle, labour, ideology, institutions and more. We often collectively author work, so far in the form of key words, and organise events and work days exploring Marxist approaches to performance.
I am also developing a larger research project with CHS (illustration) colleague Maggie Gray, exploring cartoon theatre, 1965–1992. This is the first in-depth study of cartoon theatre, grounded in an original interdisciplinary methodology twinning performance studies and popular art history, grounded in innovative modes of archival research.
Finally, I am developing work exploring French colonial aphasia (Stoler, 2016) as it relates to theatrical and cultural production across three sites: the settler colony of Algeria from 1945 until its liberation in 1962, the current colony of French Guyana and hexagonal France itself. My overarching concern is to trace how linking these spatially disconnected but deeply historically connected spaces reveals the aphasia at the heart of the French state's relationship to its past and present modes of imperial governance.
- Joint Research Officer: Awards for the Theatre and Performance Research Association
- Joint Working Group Convenor 'Performance Economies' International Federation for Theatre Research
- London Theatre Seminar Organising Committee
Publications
Against community: ambivalent identities in Actors Touring Company and David Greig's The Events
Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe, 2025, Studies in Theatre and Performance (45), 2pp 196–213, Published
Policing Exhibit B in St Denis and Paris: afterlives of the French Imperial state at the theatre doors
McGuinness, Caoimhe Mader, 2023, Performance Research (27), 3-4pp 98-104, Published
Double take. Book Review of: 'Unmaking mimesis : essays on feminism and theatre' by Elin Diamond
Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe, 2021, Theatre Research International (46), 3pp 407-410, Published
Marxist keywords for performance
Blackwell-Pal, Jaswinder, Boyle, Michael Shane, Dilks, Ash, Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe, Mckeon, Olive, Moravec, Lisa, Simari, Alessandro, Unger, Clio and Young, Martin, 2021, Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (36), 1pp 25-53, Published
Book Review of: 'Viral dramaturgies : HIV and AIDS in performance in the Twenty-First Century' by Alyson Campbell and Dirk Gindt (eds.)
McGuinness, Caoimhe Mader, 2020, Nordic Theatre Studies (31), 2pp 132-134, Published
Book Review of: 'Space invaders : radical geographies of protest' by Paul Routledge
Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe, 2018, Performance Matters (4), 3pp 158-159, Published
Performing solidarity: affirmation, difference and debility in Project O's SWAGGA
Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe, 2018, Contemporary Theatre Review (28), 3pp 367-377, Published
Book Review of: 'Performing antagonism : theatre, performance & radical democracy' by Tony Fisher and Eve Katsouraki (eds)
Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe, 2017, Contemporary Theatre Review (27), 4pp 529-530, E-pub ahead of print
Protesting 'Exhibit B' in London: reconfiguring antagonism as the claiming of theatrical space
McGuinness, Caoimhe Mader, 2016, Contemporary Theatre Review (26), 2pp 211-226, Published
Book Review of: 'Performing European memories : trauma, ethics, politics' by Milija Gluhovic
Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe, 2014, Theatre Survey (55), 3pp 420-422, Published
Book Review of: 'Agency and embodiment : performing gestures/producing culture' by Carrie Noland
Mader McGuinness, Caoimhe, 2012, Contemporary Theatre Review (22), 2pp 274-275, Published
Empire, extraction and power in the festivals of Britain of 1951 and 2022
McGuinness, Caoimhe Mader (2026). Cambridge, U.K.: (Cambridge University Press) [Published]
Dissensual reproductions in You Should See the Other Guy's 'Land of the Three Towers'
Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe (2021). In: Fryer, Nic, Conroy, Colette, (eds.), London, U.K.: Rowman & Littlefieldpp 217-235 [Published]
Engaging engaged archives: revisiting Cartoon Theatre
Gray, Maggie and Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe(2024). [Published]
Resonating histories: the 1951 Festival of Britain’s travelling ship Campania and 2022’s Unboxed About Us
Mader McGuinness, Caoimhe(2024). [Published]
Identity and consensus in 1951 Festival of Britain & Unboxed Festival 2022
Mader McGuinness, Caoimhe(2022). [Published]
Intempestive dissensus: reproducing possible proletarian public spheres in You Should See the Other Guy’s Land of the Three Towers
Mader McGuinness, Caoimhe(2017). [Published]
Queer Conversation with Dennis Altman
Altman, Dennis and Mader Mcguinness, Caoimhe(2016). [Published]