Dr David Calder

Biography

I am a Lecturer in Theatre & Performance Studies in the Department of Drama at Manchester. Broadly speaking, my research and teaching address questions of theatrical space and time and link such questions to the issue of labour. I am especially interested in what happens when theatre claims space as public (hence my research on street theatre--see Research section for details). In both my research and my teaching, I approach theatre as an institution, staffed by workers, that establishes a particular public, and as an event, a durational encounter that creates a dynamic between performers and spectator and acts on space and time in peculiar ways.

Prior to joining the Drama Department in 2014, I earned my B.A. in French from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and completed my Ph.D., titled "Visible Machinery: Street Theatre and Industrial Space in Contemporary France," at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. I conducted fieldwork for my doctorate as a Fulbright Fellow in France, supported by the Institute for International Education and the Franco-American Commission and hosted by the research group Langages, Actions Urbaines, Altérités at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture -- Nantes. That experience of international exchange and interdisciplinary collaboration continues to shape the questions I ask as a researcher and teacher, and how I go about answering them.