Chris Megson, SFHEA

Key words:

British theatre since 1945; contemporary playwriting; global theatres of the real (documentary, tribunal, verbatim); theatre and censorship; theatre and religion

My research investigates theatre and politics within a broadly philosophical framework, focusing on post-war and contemporary British theatre, global theatres of the real (documentary and verbatim theatre), and theatre censorship. 

My latest book project, Theatre Censorship in Contemporary Europe: Silence and Protest (University of Exeter Press, 2024), co-edited with Anne Etienne, examines the contexts, practices, and impacts of theatre censorship in 21st-century European theatre - from Spain, the Netherlands, and Slovenia to Ireland, Russia, and the Balkans - in a context of seismic political change on the continent. My previous publications include Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present (co-edited with Alison Fosyth; Palgrave, 2009), which was the first book to analyse the resurgence of documentary, tribunal, and verbatim theatres around the world in the twenty-first century, and Decades of Modern British Playwriting - the 1970s (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2012), which offers fresh critical perspectives on British theatre of the 1970s.

My publications on post-war British theatre have explored, variously, the legacy of the countercultural revolutions of 1968, theatrical responses to the Cold War, and the theatre of Howard Barker, Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, David Edgar, Harold Pinter, and Arnold Wesker, amongst others. I have also published several essays on contemporary British playwriting and religion, (post-)secularism, and cultural 're-enchantment', focusing on the work of Mike Bartlett, Dennis Kelly, Bryony Lavery, Anders Lustgarten, Abi Morgan, Nick Payne, and Lucy Prebble. 

In 2023, I was elected Vice President of CDE, the German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English, for a three-year term. From 2017-23, I was the founding Director of the Centre for Contemporary British Theatre at Royal Holloway, curating - with colleagues - numerous research activities, platform events, and conferences in this broad field.

I am the co-editor of a book series - 'Playwriting and the Contemporary: Critical Collaborations' - launched in 2023 with Liverpool University Press: the series aims to publish innovative and cross-disciplinary research that centres the contemporary as a period marker and discursive concept. I also work with publishers Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, as one of the Series Editors of Student Editions, to expand and diversify the range of plays - classic and contemporary - available to undergraduates and younger readers.

I welcome enquiries from research students. To date, I've supervised 13 doctoral students to successful and timely completion of their projects, and examined 28 PhDs nationally and internationally. I was awarded Royal Holloway's inaugural Doctoral Supervisor of the Year prize in 2018 and was subsequently shortlisted for the Times Higher 'Outstanding Research Supervisor of the Year' award.

I'm active in sharing my research with public audiences in partnership with industry colleagues. In recent years, I've chaired events and presented my research at the National Theatre (South Bank), the V&A, the Barbican, the LSE Literary Festival, the Theatre Royal Haymarket, the Pleasance Theatre, the Chelsea Theatre, the Riverside Studios, the Young Vic, the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the Royal College of Art, and on the BBC World Service. 

Teaching and Public Engagement

I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I have more than thirty years' experience of teaching in higher education, and of programme validation, design, periodic review, and external examining. I have guest-lectured in schools, run workshops in industry hubs such as the Northern Actors' Centre, and led degree programmes for distance learning students at Rose Bruford College (where I worked for several years as Programme Leader in Theatre Studies). I have lectured and taught internationally, including in Japan, South Korea, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates.

Academic Leadership

At Royal Holloway, I have recently completed three years' service on the School Executive as Director of Postgraduate Research (PGR) Education in the School of Performing and Digital Arts. In this role, I led the strategic development of PGR programmes in Drama, Theatre & Dance, Media Arts, and Music, including through a successful external review, and curated an annual programme of interdisciplinary research training and employability-related activities.