The Centre for Spectatorship and Audience Research, run by co-directors Kelsey Jacobson, Scott Mealey, Kelsey Blair, Jenny Salisbury, and Signy Lynch, provides opportunities for scholars, artists, and organizations to share their ideas about the experience of theatre-going and how audience research might be conducted.
These critical conversations help lay the foundation for the new work we publish, the research we conduct, the projects we facilitate, and the scholarship and training we promote. Given that the study of spectatorship and reception in theatre and performance studies lags behind disciplines such as film, museum studies, and computer science, our ongoing desire is to push the boundaries of knowledge-building about who theatre audiences are and how they make sense of their theatrical encounters. Though our focus is in theatre and performance studies, we believe strongly in interdisciplinarity research and welcome scholars from museum studies, education, film, video game studies, visual arts, communications, cultural studies, and beyond.
