Postgraduate research in dance, film and theatre
Dance, Film and Theatre provides a research environment in which to understand, interrogate and experiment with the contemporary practices and historical evidence of dance, theatre or performance in their cultural contexts. Research students undertake a wide range of projects utilising new methodologies and research fields within the disciplines, including work on popular culture, critical theory, embodiment, new histories and cultural difference.
PhD
Programme
The University of Surrey graduate programme has a distinctive history of international and UK graduate completions across a wide range of topics. Our postgraduate alumni are leaders in their distinctive research areas and have innovatively formed the methods and contents of higher education curricula, performances and publications worldwide
This programme prepares individual graduates for success at each stage of their own PhD project development. The structure is uniquely designed to provide intensive graduate preparation for a future career and is suitable for either part- or full-time candidates. The two research weeks held each year (May and November) include keynote seminars, intensive study groups on current themes in dance, film and theatre research, research skills training and careful modelling of research outputs, including conference presentations and preparation of publications. Completion of the programme includes both an extensive thesis and an oral viva with external examiners.
www.surrey.ac.uk/dance
Entry Standards
Entry is on the basis of a good honours degree and usually an MA in a relevant arts subject. Nongraduates are accepted if qualifications and experience are relevant to a postgraduate degree. Students are initially registered for a PhD with probationary status and, subject to satisfactory progress, are subsequently confirmed as having PhD status.
Funding
Students can apply for a full Faculty scholarship or for a fees-only Departmental Teaching Assistantship. At interview, we are happy to discuss other funding sources with you.
Fees
UK/EU students - £3,828
Overseas students 2011/12 entrants onwards - £11,550
Overseas students pre 2011/12 entrants - £11,025
Find out more about our fees and funding policies.
Dance, Film and Theatre research overview
Research
Academic members of staff within Dance, Film and Theatre are well known internationally for their exceptionally strong research profile and success with large-scale competitive grants and graduate completions.
Current areas of staff research are outlined below, but supervision of other subjects may be accommodated:
- Dance on screen, popular dance, cultural studies
- Modern and postmodern dance, corporeality, performance semiotics, transnationalism
- Community dance, dance aesthetics, professional development
- Laban movement analysis, African dance, dance anthropology
- Film theory and criticism, European cinema, documentary film
- Choreography, somatic practices, new dance, psychology and the arts
- Performing the past, site-specific performance, theatre and performance writing and practice as research
- Ballet history, dance theory, European arts history
- Shakespearean drama and phenomenological approaches to theatre
Research environment
Students have access to a postgraduate research room with computer facilities and to all previous PhD theses and MA dissertations. You are also free to use the facilities of the National Resource Centre for Dance. Students are invited to a fortnightly research seminar for staff and students and have instituted a biennial postgraduate research symposium. Further research training is provided by the Postgraduate Skills Development Programme and the University Library is well equipped for doctoral students’ research needs.
Dance, Film and Theatre research groups
Performing the Archive
Performing the Archive extends to a range of creative, curatorial and critical projects examining relationships between the body, memory, social history and archival practices. In particular, the theme rethinks the role and significance of archives as repositories with second lives in the present and the notion of a living archive.
The group builds upon the unique resources of the Laban Archive housed in the National Resource Centre for Dance. There are two current AHRCfunded projects in progress – The Pioneer Women project and Digital Dance Archives (DDA). This latter project is concerned with archival interactivity and extends this research grouping into consideration of audiences and interactive communities.
www.surrey.ac.uk/dft/research/projects/archive
Performances of the Popular (POP)
This new theme emerges out of the Dance and Spectacle theme, which culminated in the 2010 Society of Dance History Scholars conference hosted by the Department in July and the Popular Music and Dance Matters symposium. POP examines the full range of popular genres and the ways in which performance produces and shapes popular culture, including in the fields of sitespecific performance, screen studies, non-Western dance, theatre and film.
The Surrey Documentary Group
This research group is concerned with issues dealing with documentation and documentary film that extend beyond film to other modes of documentation in social and scientific research. A strand of this research is concerned with the blurring of genres of representation through techniques such as animation, and the role of documentary film and theatre in activism, such as in relation to the environment. A seminar on Documentary and Intimacy is also being planned.
www.surrey.ac.uk/dft/research/projects/surrey
National Resource Centre for Dance (NRCD)
The NRCD, founded in 1982, is a non-profit national archive and resource provider for dance and movement based in the University Library. The NRCD aims to preserve the nation’s dance heritage and enables, supports and enhances the study and teaching of dance.
Surrey houses the National Resource Centre for Dance in the University Library.
Apply for postgraduate research in dance, film and theatre
PhD Programme
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