Dr Amanda Rogers

I teach on a variety of courses and topics. Human Geography allows us to critically explore the world around us and to make connections between different processes in ways that few other subjects do. As such, I'm really interested in facilitating this critical, connective perspective among students. I teach on Cities, Creative Geographies, tutorial and dissertation supervision, and qualitative and creative research methods. I am currently setting up a new MSc on Society, Environment and Global Change which I co-direct with my colleague Dr Angharad Closs Stephens. This will explore the key pressing issues facing us in the world today from climate change, to development, to the politics of nationalism. 

I specialise in researching British East Asian, Asian American and South East Asian theatres – but at present am especially concerned with the relationship between theatre/dance, war and geopolitics. In previous research I documented how refugee Lao Americans created theatre that dealt with the consequences of an often forgotten/denied episode of the Vietnam War: the ‘Secret War’ against Laos. More recently, I have been developing this work in relation to the Cambodian civil war and the resulting Khmer Rouge genocide. Here, my research is concerned with how national identities are recovered, reworked and embodied in performance, how war and traumatic events can be represented on stage – particularly in ways that attend to their affective ambiguity, and the politics surrounding this process. This is important in contexts where the neoliberal state is open to transnational forces that promote creative experimentation, resulting in performances that potentially conflict with the agendas and ideologies of authoritarian regimes. I am also interested in the idea that artists can be viewed as geopolitical agents – as Cold War defectors, as cultural intermediaries that facilitate inter-state relations, and as change makers in society.

My previous research was concerned with the politics of diversity in American and British theatre, particularly the erasure of East and South-East Asian minorities. I have written extensively about the politics of yellowface and the representation of racial-ethnic minorities on stage. My work examined how discrimination led artists to try and travel to create opportunities abroad. I particularly explored the movement of practitioners and performances between British East Asian, Asian American, and South East Asian (primarily Singaporean) theatre worlds. This research formed the focus of my monograph: Performing Asian Transnationalisms: theatre, identity and the geographies of performance.

In 2017 I was awarded the Dillwyn Medal by the Learned Society of Wales for Outstanding Research in the Creative Arts and Humanities.