Dr Fintan Walsh

Overview

Biography

Fintan is Programme Director of MA Text and Performance (with RADA), and has served as Programme Director of BA Theatre and Drama Studies. He is Co-Director of Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, Director of BiGS (Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality), and is School of Arts Research Ethics Chair and College Representative.

Prior to joining Birkbeck in 2012, Fintan worked at Queen Mary University of London (2011-12) and at Trinity College Dublin, where he was Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (2009-2011), Coordinator of the MPhil Theatre and Performance (2010-2011), and associate lecturer (2004-2011). 

Fintan has been a visiting lecturer/researcher at Freie Universität Berlin (2014/16), Humanities Institute, University College Dublin (2014), and Helsinki University (2015). 

His research primarily focuses on contemporary theatre 
and performance, and involves national and international collaborations with artists and academics.

 

Qualifications

• MPhil, PhD, Trinity College Dublin, 2007
• Fellow, HEA, 2012

Administrative responsibilities

• Director, MA Text and Performance (with RADA)
• Co-Director, Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre
• Director, BiGS (Birkbeck Gender and Sexuality)
• School of Arts Research Ethics Chair
• Advisory Board, Birkbeck Institute for Social Research (BISR)

Professional activities

Fintan has examined PhDs at institutions such as Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, Trinity College Dublin, University of East Anglia and University of Helsinki, and served as external examiner of programmes as University of Roehampton, University of Reading, and University College Dublin, and validated degrees nationally and internationally.

In the past Fintan has worked as a script reader in the Literary Department of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and collaborated in script development, dramaturgy, and criticism projects with a number of theatre companies and organisations including Dublin Fringe Festival and Dublin Theatre Festival.  For over a decade he contributed reviews, feature articles and interviews for Irish Theatre Magazine, including as staff writer, and is a Member of Project Arts Centre, Dublin. 

Fintan is on the editorial board of the journal Imagined Theatres. He was an editorial board member (2012-2015) and Associate Editor of the journal Theatre Research International (2015-2018), and is currently its Senior Editor. 

Fintan frequently peer reviews articles and books for all the major publications and publishers in his field and cognate disciplines.

Professional memberships

• Fintan is or has been a member of Irish Society for Theatre Research (ISTR), Performance Studies International (PSI), The Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA), and the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), and currently serves on its Executive Committee. He has assessed funding applications nationally and internationally, and is as a member of AHRC Peer Review College.

• He is a founding member (2009) and former co-convenor (2009-2014) of IFTR's Queer Futures working group (2009), and co-edited the group's first collection of writings in Theatre Research International (2015). 

Research

Research overview

Fintan primarily researches contemporary theatre 
and performance. To date his work has focused on three sometimes related fields of inquiry: 1) queer theatre, performance and cultural politics; 2) the practices and politics of emotional and affective experience in theatre, including structures and experiences of intimacy and trauma, dissent and disorientation, generosity and grief; 3) medical humanities and psychosocial issues. A concern for the representational strategies of bodies, subjects and communities under inordinate threat or distress unites this research, leading to monographs that examine masculinity and ideas of 'crisis' (Male Trouble: Masculinity and the Performance of Crisis); the relationship among psychoanalysis, therapy culture and performance (Theatre & Therapy); and theatre and social and political change (Queer Performance and Contemporary Ireland: Dissent and Disorientation, shortlisted for the David Bradby Research Award, 2016).

These concerns are also represented across numerous journal articles, book chapters and edited volumes. Recent publications include 'Pugilistic Queer Performance: Working Through and Working Out' (GLQ), and writing on contagion and theatre, supported by ISSF/Wellcome funding, including the chapter 'Pathogenic Performativity: Theatrical Contagion and Fascist Affect' (in The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science, ed. Kirsten E. Shepherd Barr) and the collection Theatres of Contagion: Transmitting Early Modern to Contemporary Performance. Fintan's research has addressed diverse forms including drama, theatre, live art, protest, pageants, film and music, and involves collaboration with theatre makers and artists, in particular via Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre, of which he is a Co-Director.

Fintan's research has been supported by awards from bodies including ISSF/Wellcome Trust, CHASE, the Irish Research Council and Trinity College Dublin. 

Research Centres and Institutes

• Director, Birkbeck Institute for Gender and Sexuality Studies
• Co-Director, Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre
• Member, Centre for Medical Humanities

Supervision and teaching

Supervision

Fintan welcomes inquiries from prospective PhD students (including practice-led projects) interested in researching within his field or related areas, in particular topics relating to:

• modern and contemporary drama, theatre and performance;
• identity and cultural politics;
• queer theatre, performance and art practices;
• psychosocial phenomena and medical humanities;
• Irish drama, theatre and performance.

Recently or currently supervised PhD projects investigate ecology and performance, Sarah Kane and psychoanalysis, mental illness and contemporary theatre, neurodiversity and performance, and documentary theatre and migration.

Fintan established GRiT (Graduate Research in Theatre) in 2014, to foster and support graduate research in drama, theatre and performance studies. Forthcoming and past events can be found here.

Teaching

Fintan teaches across MA Text and Performance, BA Theatre and Drama/Theatre and English, and MA Dramaturgy. 

Publications

Business and community

Outreach

In his capacity as Co-Director of Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and Director of BiGS, Fintan routinely works directly with artists, activists and academics to engage a range of publics. This takes the form of leading Artist Fellowship and Artist in Association schemes, as well as developing symposia, conferences and workshops.

Fintan has directly organised or co-organised a number of symposia and international conferences at Birkbeck that engage academic, artistic and the public including the Irish Society for Theatre Research's annual conference 'The Irish and the City' in 2013, 'On Going On: Sustaining Life in Theatre' in 2015, Politicians & Other Performers and Theatres of Contagion: Infectious Performance in 2017.

He frequently speaks at international theatre and performance events and symposia, and has presented keynotes, lectures or workshops by invitation at International Federation for Theatre Research, London Theatre Seminar, University of Warwick, the Freud Museum, University of Cambridge, The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of Surrey, University of Reading, Freie Universität Berlin, Queen Mary University of London, Queen's University Belfast, University College Dublin, Brunel, Dublin Theatre Festival, Project Arts Centre, LÓKAL International Theatre Festival, Reykjavik, Arcola Theatre and Synge Summer School, Wicklow.