I joined Loughborough University in 2018 as part of the Excellence 100 campaign, after holding positions at the University of Lincoln and De Montfort University. I gained my PhD from the University of Edinburgh supported by a University Scholarship, and, in 2009, was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Edinburgh. I am also a Fellow of the Higher Education Association.
My research interests are eclectic, focusing on interdisciplinary modernism, theatre history and physical culture. I am the author of three monographs: British Avant-Garde Theatre (Palgrave MacMillan 2012), Modernist and Avant-Garde Performance: an introduction (Edinburgh UP 2016) and the British Academy-funded and Society for Theatre Research award-winning ‘Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels through Russia’ (Palgrave MacMillan 2016). I have also written numerous chapters and articles on topics such as directing in Russia, the stage designs of John Piper and political folk theatre.
Much of my recent work focuses on the history of professional wrestling. I am the co-editor of Performance and Professional Wrestling (Routledge 2016) and am the academic lead/commissioner for the on going Wrestling Resurgence project which aims to explore wrestling as an artistic practice through live wrestling shows.
I am also Secretary of the British Association for Modernist Studies and am part of the organizing committee of the Northern Modernism Network.
Currently I am working on a number of new projects including articles on translations of Chekhov’s plays and the history of all-in wrestling in Britain, and chapters on drama in the 1930s, wrestling silence, and the directorial work of Theodore Komisarjevsky and Alexander Tairov. I am also involved in a number of on going collaborations with arts organisations, filmmakers, performers, curators, and wrestlers, particularly building on our funded Being Human Festival event ‘British Wrestling: history and resurgence’ (2017).
I have supervised both traditional and practice-based research PhDs to completion, and welcome PhD applications in the areas of modernist culture, theatre history and sport.
For more details about my research and regular updates see www.clairewarden.net or my Twitter feed.
For more on Wrestling Resurgence see Twitter.
I have supervised both traditional and practice-based research PhDs to completion, and welcome PhD applications in the areas of modernist culture, theatre history and sport.