Zoë Tweed

Teaching Fellow in English Literature, Drama and Performance

Contact details

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Street

Office 2.06, 21 Buccleuch Place
Edinburgh
EH8 9LD

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Availability

  • Office Hour 11.30-12.30 Wednesdays

Biography

Background

 I completed my PhD in March 2024 with the submission of my thesis, ‘Matrix of Shame: A Feminist Reading of Shame, the Body and Radical Disruption in the Performance Work of Marina Abramović, Samuel Beckett and Ana Mendieta’ at the University of Reading. My research specialism is the intersection between theatre/performance practices, psychoanalytical studies, affect theory and the cultural politics of emotion. My work considers shame’s role in the social categorisation of bodies and the matrices of power that govern them. Taking a specifically female-gendered and socio-political approach to shame, my work reveals the role of shame in marginalising and oppressive systems of power, but paradoxically, when read through these performance works, it offers a reframing of shame as constructive, productive and disruptive of normative social and cultural constructs in radical ways. I look at concepts and theories of the body, trauma, femininity, hybridity, hydro and eco-feminism, disgust, risk and rage.

I was Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at University of Reading from 2017-December 2024. I have also taught at University of West London, Buckinghamshire New University and London Metropolitan University. I have a background in theatre-making and an MA in both the practice and theory of performance-making, and I have worked on a range of theatre projects throughout my career. 

Further details on my work as a theatre-maker, lecturer and researcher are available on my website: https://www.zoetweed.co.uk/

 

Undergraduate teaching

 I teach across both theatre practice and theory/literary contexts and my teaching specialisms are in contemporary performance practice/making and the intersections of performance with socio-political and psychoanalytic theories. My teaching practice is always informed by a deep understanding of theatre as an embodied practice, and therefore I work to integrate components of practice into all my teaching. 

I am currently teaching: Shakespearean Sexualities, Time and Space of Performance and supervising postgraduate MSc dissertations. 

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