Emma Cox

Emma Cox was Head of Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance from 2021-2024.

My research examines cultural production and public engagement associated with forced migration. I examine and identify connections between diverse forms: performance, ritual, social activism, humanitarianism, and visual culture.

I am co-editor (with Sam Durrant, Lyndsey Stonebridge and Agnes Woolley) of the major interdisciplinary volume, Refugee Imaginaries: Research Across the Humanities (2020), and the contributing editor of Performance and Migration (2021), a video and publishing collaboration between Digital Theatre+ and Routledge, featuring content by scholars and artists. My books include Performing Noncitizenship (2015), Theatre & Migration (2014), and the edited play collection Staging Asylum (2013). My work has been published in leading journals, including Theatre Journal, Medical Humanities and Theatre Research International.

As well as human migration, I work on cultural histories associated with biological and digital remains. This project encompasses international case studies of performance, exhibition, activism and commemoration, across range of sites and contexts, including war, asylum seeking, repatriation, colonialism, and medicine.

I welcome doctoral students working on migration, social activism, racialisation, humanitarianism or postcolonialism. I have a secondary research interest in Shakespeare in contemporary performance, particularly Indigenous or postcolonial stagings, and also welcome research proposals in these fields.