Dr Grant Peterson
Associate Dean - Student Experience/Senior Lecturer in Theatre

Research area(s)

• British Alternative Theatre and Outdoor Performance Histories, Politics, and Practices
• Theatre Historiography
• Gender and Sexuality
• Musical Theatre
• Student Experience and Educational Settings

Research Interests

I maintain multiple research interests, including alternative theatre histories, musical theatre studies, gender and sexuality studies, theatre historiography, and student experience in educational settings.

My postgraduate work initiated at UCLA involved ethnographic fieldwork as a go-go dancer and used qualitative methods to examine changing modes of gender and choreography in dance clubs from 1970-2010. This work is featured in two subsequent journal articles and two book chapters.

My doctoral research offered a historiographical revision of British alternative theatre. Portions of this work appear in an article for Research in Drama Education: Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance. Additional writing on alternative theatre histories features in book chapters in British Theatre Companies: 1968-1979 and Flower/Power: British Literature in Transition. 

My work on student experiences in higher education settings appears in three co-authored works. With Professor Jacky Bratton, I wrote ‘The Internet: History 2.0?’ which performatively explores issues students and scholars face in digital landscapes and appears in The Cambridge Companion to Theatre History. With Dr. Broderick Chow, I wrote ‘Democratising Singing: Teaching Musical Theatre to a Mixed-Ability Higher Education Cohort’ in the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal. And with Professor Mark McCormack and Callum Blanchard, I wrote 'Inclusive Masculinities in a Working-Class Sixth Form in Northeast England.

I was principal investigator for a Fapesp-funded partnership with University of Campinas in Brazil with Professor Larissa de Oliveriera Neves, working on historiographical interrogations of marginalised theatre practices and exchanges between Great Britain and Brazil. I was also sponsor and mentor for the subsequent Fapesp-funded research fellowship at Brunel for Professor Larissa de Oliveriera Neves.