Discover the T-MIGRANTS Database
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
On Wednesday, May 21, the T-MIGRANTS database will be officially launched as part of the research colloquium / doctoral seminar. Everyone is warmly invited to join the presentation.
When: 2:00 PM (c.t.)
Where: Georgenstraße 11, Room 009
Or via Zoom:
Join here
Following the launch, there will be an opportunity to connect and exchange ideas over coffee and cookies.
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Welcome, Dila Okuş!
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
New Guest Researcher at T-MIGRANTS
We are delighted to welcome Dila Okuş as a guest researcher at T-MIGRANTS. With the support of a TÜBİTAK scholarship, she is currently conducting research at LMU on her project Transnational Interactions and the Evolution of Theatre Acting in the Late Ottoman Empire: A Study of Ottoman-European Actor Exchanges. Dila will be with us for six months, and we are excited about the perspectives and expertise she brings to our research project.
Hackathon II
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
A Collaborative Workshop within the LMU-TAU Research Cooperation Programme 2024
A Collaborative Workshop within the LMU-TAU Research Cooperation Programme 2024
From 17 to 19 March 2025, the second Hackathon within the collaboration between T-MIGRANTS and DYBBUK took place at the LMU Institute for Theatre Studies in Munich. Ruthie Abeliovich, Sinai Rusinek, Patrick Aprent, Hanieh Arjomand-Fard, Jorit Hopp, and Berenika Szymanski-Düll met for three intensive days dedicated to integrating data on Jewish theatre migrants into the T-MIGRANTS database and, in doing so, mapping the cross-cultural dynamics of Jewish and non-Jewish theatre migration between 1830 and 1920.
Over the course of three days, we followed a structured workflow, beginning with the transfer and consolidation of existing datasets from the T-MIGRANTS and DYBBUK teams. Through collaborative discussions, we critically examined our data and categorisation strategies, identifying gaps, resolving inconsistencies, and harmonising different data formats. These efforts not only contributed to a more accurate and interconnected understanding of historical migration patterns among theatre professionals but also allowed us to see the first crucial results of our collaborative work while identifying new tasks for further refinement.
All in all, the event was highly productive, and we are excited to continue this work! For further details and insights, stay tuned for our upcoming report on key findings and future research directions.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Theatre and Migration: The Productions and Aesthetics of Shifting Spaces
Conference organized by the ERC projects T-MIGRANTS (LMU Munich) and DYBBUK (TAU), 23rd-25th November 2025 in Munich
Space is a fundamental concept in human experience, shaping our environments and how we orient ourselves within them. Traditionally viewed through the lens of geography, the “spatial turn” has brought space into focus across disciplines. As Kim Solga observes, the spatial turn “made issues of space and place central to the investigation of meaning-making in theatre, in staged or curated performances outside traditional spaces, and in everyday life” (Solga 2019, 14). This conference builds on this understanding to broaden the concept of space in light of crucial debates on globalization and migration. It aims to explore not only the aesthetic aspects of theatre and its spaces, but also their sociological dimensions. We will examine how theatre and migration reshape social and aesthetic spaces, asking: How have theatre migrants challenged, imagined, and redefined spaces? What historical transformations have emerged through these migrations?
We invite contributions that explore the production, negotiation, and imagination of space in migration processes from comparative, transnational, contemporary, or historical perspectives.
Are you interested? Then take a look at our full
CfP.
Newly Elected Member of the IFTR Executive Committee
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
T-MIGRANTS Doctorate Candidate Vanesa Cotroneo
The official results of the IFTR General Elections include a member of our T-MIGRANTS team as part of the Executive Committee: Vanesa Cotroneo has been elected as the new Student Member Representative of the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR). Her candidacy focused on the internationalisation of theatre research by fostering greater participation of students from the Global South, sharing information about funding opportunities, and promoting support for researchers with children.
In addition to addressing the questions and concerns of early-career scholars and bringing these issues to the Executive Committee for discussion, her responsibilities will include: promoting and co-organising workshops for students, (co-)developing the programme for presentations at the New Scholars’ Forum, inviting keynote speakers to the New Scholars’ Forum, collaborating with other members of the New Scholars’ Sub-Committee and Chairs, and representing students’ interest at the IFTR Annual Conference.
Vanesas term will begin in June 2025 and will last for two years, aligning perfectly with her dissertation plans within the ERC T-MIGRANTS project.
New Publication
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
European Theatre Migrants in the Age of Empire. Personal Experiences, Transnational Trajectories, and Socio-Political Impacts
We are excited to announce that our book European Theatre Migrants in the Age of Empire is out now!
This edited volume, published by Palgrave Macmillan, explores the crucial yet insufficiently addressed phenomenon of European theatre migration in the long nineteenth century. It argues that theatre migration went far beyond the popular phenomenon of touring, significantly shaping the historical discourse on theatre and mobility. The hidden and multifaceted histories of European theatre migration that this book seeks to explore allow us to rethink national theatre histories as histories of mobility, entanglements, and negotiations. They also allow the reader to challenge and to decenter a European self-understanding of insularity and a European cosmopolitanism ignorant of its imperial and colonial roots.
The book is available both as a hardcover edition and online in an Open Access format.
Many thanks to all contributors!
Guest Lecture
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
“Migrations of Yiddish Popular Theatre” by Ruthie Abeliovich
On the 13th of November 2025, Dr. Ruthie Abeliovich gave a stimulating lecture in the seminar “Theatre Practices and Aesthetics of Migration” as part of the collaboration between T-MIGRANTS and DYBBUK within the framework of the LMU-TAU Research Cooperation Programme. Her presentation, entitled "Migrations of the Yiddish Popular Theatre", offered students a fascinating insight into the history of Jewish theatre. In her engaging talk, Abeliovich explored how migration has shaped and enriched Yiddish popular theatre, underscoring its profound cultural and historical significance.
Exploring Polish Emigrant Theatre
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Presentation of the Current Book Project by Prof. Dr. Karolina Prykowska Michalak
On Wednesday, 30 October 2024, Prof. Dr. Karolina Prykowska Michalak from the University of Łódź, currently a DAAD research fellow within the framework of T-MIGRANTS, presented her ongoing book project at the Institute for Theatre Studies of the LMU. The lecture focused on the theatre works of Polish emigrants, outlining their creative contributions and cultural significance. Prof. Michalak shared her research findings and invited the audience to participate in a discussion on the cultural and artistic impact of these emigrants, facilitating valuable insights and exchanges on migration and the arts. We look forward with great anticipation to the publication of her book.
Interim Meeting of the IFTR Digital Humanities Working Group
Jorit Hopp
Jorit Hopp presents recent developments of the T-MIGRANTS database
Since the presentation of the T-MIGRANTS database at the IFTR conference in Reykjavik 2022 by Berenika Szymanski-Düll, much has changed in the data model and database implementation. Jorit Hopp joined the online interim meeting of the IFTR Working Group on Friday 25 October 2024 to provide an update on these changes. In a panel with Helmut Reichenbächer (OCAD Toronto) and Kasia Langenegger (University of Bern), he presented the conceptual and logical model of the behind the database, as well as some of the changes to the controlled vocabularies initiated by the collaboration with the DYBBUK project. The presentations were followed by a very productive discussion about the problems and advantages of working with relational databases compared to linked open data and the lack of an established ontology for theatre studies.
New Member
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Welcome to Patrick Aprent!
We are excited to welcome Patrick Aprent as the newest member of our research team. Patrick joined us in September 2024 and brings valuable expertise in working with theatre almanacs, the mobility of theater practitioners – particularly women – in the Habsburg Empire, and digital humanities. We look forward to his contributions and the fresh perspectives he will bring to our work.
T-MIGRANTS & DYBBUK Hackathon
Jorit Hopp
Workshop within the LMU-TAU Research Cooperation Programme 2024
The collaboration between T-MIGRANTS and DYBBUK within the LMU-TAU Research Cooperation Programme has reached a new phase. From September 12 to 14, Berenika Szymanski-Düll, Patrick Aprent, and Hanieh Arjomand-Fard met with Ruthie Abelovich and Sinai Rusinek from the DYBBUK project for an intensive three-day hackathon at the Kloster Frauenwörth on Frauenchiemsee. The goal was to finalize a joint data model and establish a data pipeline between the projects. Although both projects are data-driven and focus on closely related topics, their working methods are very different. How can semi-automatically extracted data from a relatively closed corpus be combined with manually extracted data from heterogeneous sources? How can the concept of labour migration, as used in the T-MIGRANTS project, be applied to describe Jewish touring and company-based theatre?
Presentations by Berenika Szymanski-Düll (Migration and Labor Mobility of European Theatre Professionals), Jorit Hopp (Migration and Network Analysis), Ruthie Abeliovich (The Odysseys of Modern Yiddish Theatre), and Sinai Rusinek (Yiddish Theatre Migration, Digital Processes, and Existential Questions) provided a foundation for discussing these and other questions. Even before the hackathon, we had begun developing a shared controlled vocabulary, and the discussions underscored its importance—so we finalized it. But the work didn’t stop there. Over the next two days, Sinai Rusinek and Hanieh Arjomand-Fard matched theatre professionals and organizations with our data, Patrick Aprent shared his expertise in working with theatre almanacs and the dentification of historical locations, and we explored different methods of data visualisation and analysis.
All in all, the hackathon was very successful and laid a solid foundation for further data sharing and collaborative analysis. The T-MIGRANTS team is already looking forward to the next hackathon.
Exploring Theatre and Migration
Jorit Hopp
Berenika Szymanski-Düll and Jorit Hopp at the Summer Academy of the Max Weber Programme and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation in Ljubljana.
From 24 August to 1 September 2024, the Max Weber Programme and the German Academic Scholarship Foundation held their long-standing Summer Academy in Ljubljana. For one week, around 120 participants from various disciplines and at different stages of their studies meet to work intensively in groups on specific topics. Berenika-Szymanski Düll and Jorit Hopp had the pleasure of organising a working group entitled 'Beyond Sedentariness: Theatre Migrants in the 19th Century'. With an interdisciplinary group of 14 students ranging from mathematics to drama, they approached the lives, migration routes and aesthetic influences of theatre professionals in the 19th century. Using a variety of sources and methods presented in a series of lectures, the participants gained insights into the eventful lives of Marie Geistinger and Geza Berger. Inspired, they developed a radio play about the theatre life of the German immigrant communities in New York. However, the work of T-MIGRANTS was not limited to this one working group. T-MIGRANTS also provided a dataset for analysis and visualisation to the Machine Learning working group. Outside of the seminars, Berenika Szymanski-Düll gave a well-attended evening talk to the fellows and other experts, giving an insight into our work. We really enjoyed the exchange with everyone involved and would like to thank the organisers for the great time we had in Ljubljana.
The 2024 GAPS’s Conference
Vanesa Cotroneo
Vanesa Cotronea attended the GAPS Conference in Augsburg.
The Association for Anglophone Postcolonial Studies GAPS) convenes an international conference on an annual basis. Vanesa Cotroneo was invited to present her research at the 2024’s conference, “The Ruins of Empire. Postcolonial Hauntings”, and the Postgraduate Forum “Postcolonial Narrations” on 6 and 7 September. Hosted by the University of Augsburg, the 2024 GAPS conference brought together participants of different nationalities and from several universities in Europe and overseas. It also included keynote lectures and workshops for early career researchers by Dr. Ifeoluwa Aboluwade, Dr. Robert Craig, Dr. Hannah Teichler, and Dr. Peter Maurits. The T-MIGRANTS’ PhD student presented a paper entitled “European Theatre Migrants from Europe in Argentina (1850-1919): Performance, Itinerancy, and Translation as Strategies for Negotiating Borders,” she examined the presence of European theatre migrants in the Argentine theatre as a cultural encounter in a contact zone, where translation, performance, and itinerancy serve to challenge and deconstruct national identities. For the researcher, the negotiation of all kinds of borders also occurs at the linguistic level. In her two case studies, the Englishman Frank Brown, and the Italian Pablo Raffetto, had to adapt to Argentinean Spanish or Creole, creating a linguistic mix on the stage that would contribute to the theatrical figures of cosmopolitanism and cocoliche.
Visiting Scholar
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Karolina Prykowska Michalak at T-MIGRANTS
We are delighted that Prof. Dr. Karolina Prykowska Michalak from the
University of Lodz will be working and researching at T-MIGRANTS as a
visiting scholar over the next few weeks. We are looking forward to the
exchange with her.
SIBMAS Conference 2024
Jorit Hopp
Represented by Jorit Jens Hopp, T-MIGRANTS participated in this year’s SIBMAS conference in Hong Kong, which took place from the 23rd to the 27th of June 2024. Presented by the IATC Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, the conference focused on “Dramaturgies of Collecting: Conserving, Restaging and Interpreting the Performing Arts.”
While our presentations often focus on our experiences with data modelling and database implementation alongside our theatre historical research, Jorit Jens Hopp's paper in the international paper session “Performing and Interpreting the Archive” focused on issues of visualisation. Entitled “Exhibiting Interpretation - Restaging Professional Networks”, it explored how visualisations can be developed to not only reveal the uncertainty of data and interpretations but also to place them at the centre of critical analytical practice. In translating and mediating between the fields of visual analytics, critical graphic design, and dance and theatre reenactments, this paper echoed the spirit of Dr. Toni Sant's keynote on collecting practices across different (research) cultures. Dr. Sant's keynote was followed by keynotes on digital archiving during the pandemic, exemplified by the Subouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at Waseda University (Prof. Dr. Minako Okamuro); the enactment of archives in theatrical productions and a dramaturgy of fluid identities and relationships (Dr. Ashutosh Potdar); and a lecture performance on documentation, creation and redocumentation, featuring the production Interrupted Dreams by renowned Hong Kong artist Danny Yung.
As a deeply interdisciplinary project, SIBMAS, with its diverse lineup, provided a fantastic platform for us to make new contacts, gain insights and strengthen our connections with collecting institutions in the field of performance.
GTW Congress 2024
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
T-MIGRANTS at the 16th Congress of the Society for Theatre Studies (GTW) in Leipzig, 12.-15.6.2024
The 16th Congress of the Society for Theatre Studies (Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft, GTW) was held in Leipzig from the 12th to the 15th of June. The event was entitled OPEN SPACES. The T-MIGRANTS team was represented with a curated panel entitled “On the Move: Theatre and Spaces of Migration”. This panel explored the question of the production and formation of migration spaces, thus providing an insight into the team’s research work. In her presentation, Berenika Szymanski-Düll introduced the concept of 'theatre migration' and discussed it in relation to the project's database, which records and visualises the geographical mobilities of theatre migrants in the long 19th century. Jorit Hopp's contribution focused on issues of distance and space in relation to the migration of theatre professionals. He discussed the limitations of analysing migratory movements within a geographical concept of space and demonstrated ways to overcome them by combining it with relational concepts of space and distance metrics from network analysis. Vanesa Cotroneo, on the other hand, presented a case study on Frank Brown, reflecting on the aesthetic design of migration spaces between Europe and Argentina.
Further information on the congress can be found
here.
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
“So that the work can continue without me.”
Symposium on the Theatre Historical Work of Paul S. Ulrich, Don Juan Archive in Vienna
In cooperation with the Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte and the Thalia Germanica, the Don Juan Archive in Vienna hosted a symposium on 7 and 8 June 2024 in honour of the librarian and theatre historian Paul S. Ulrich, who died in autumn 2023. Over the course of his life, Paul S. Ulrich compiled an extensive collection and database of information from theatre almanacs and made it available to researchers. As the T-MIGRANTS project also works with Paul’s data, Berenika Szymanski-Düll and Jorit Hopp attended the event and gave an insight into how we use his data in our research.
Guest Lecture
Paula Ansaldo at T-MIGRANTS.
We are delighted to announce that Dr Paula Ansaldo will be joining our project on 5 June 2024 to deliver a lecture entitled “Jewish Theatre Migrants in Argentina in the First Half of the Twentieth Century”.
Paula Ansaldo is a theatre historian who specializes in Latin American Jewish theatre and culture. She holds a Ph.D. in History and Theory of Arts from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). She is an Associate Researcher at the National Council for Scientific Research of Argentina (CONICET) and a Lecturer at the Department of Arts of the University of Buenos Aires. She previously was a Harry Starr Postdoctoral Fellow in Judaica at the Center for Jewish Studies of Harvard University and a Ruth Meltzer Fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania. She published the book “
Broyt mit teater”. Historia del teatro judío en Argentina (EUDEBA-University of Buenos Aires Press, 2023) and has co-edited the books
Teatro independiente: historia y actualidad (Ediciones del CCC, 2017) and
Perspectivas sobre la dirección teatral: teoría, historia y pensamiento escénico (National University of Córdoba Press, 2021). Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from Fordham University- New York Public Library, Coimbra Group Universities, Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture-Simon Dubnow, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, American Philosophical Society, Latin American Jewish Studies Association, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.
You are welcome to join us. The lecture will take place at Georgenstraße 11, 009 at 2 pm. Should you wish to attend online, please send an email to: Berenika.Szymanski@lmu.de
Click here for more details.
T-MIGRANTS meets “Kulturen der Digitalität“
Jorit Hopp
T-MIGRANTS meets “Kulturen der Digitalität“
After the "Theatre and Migration" lecture series in the winter semester of 2023/24 at our home university, T-MIGRANTS extended its reach to a new educational setting. Invited by Dr. Nora Probst, Jorit Hopp taught a unit in the block seminar "Analyzing and Visualizing Cultural Heritage Research Data" at Paderborn University.
The 90-minute online lecture took place on May 17, 2024, during the seminar's second session. It featured an introductory lecture on modelling the life and migration data of theatre professionals and the challenges of handling fuzzy data, followed by a practical exercise on network visualization using the open-source tool Gephi. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to share our work with broader circles and engage with the students of Paderborn University.
New Collaboration
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
LMU-TAU Research Cooperation Programme 2024
We are delighted to announce an exciting new collaboration under the LMU-TAU Research Cooperation Programme 2024. Our project will join forces with Ruthie Abeliovich's
DYBBUK project, forming an international partnership to explore the rich and complex interactions between Jewish and non-Jewish theatre migrants during the period of 1830-1920.
The joint project, entitled NETWORKING JEWISH AND NON-JEWISH THEATRE MIGRANTS: A DIGITAL HUMANITIES APPROACH TO EXPLORING CROSS-CULTURAL DYNAMICS, 1830-1920, aims to utilize digital humanities research methods to shed light on this fascinating aspect of cultural history. Our primary goal is to develop a comprehensive dataset that will systematically identify, record, and map the movements of Jewish theatre migrants. In doing so, we aim to compare this dataset with existing information on European non-Jewish theatre migrants allowing for an examination of significant migration patterns, routes, and epicentres, as well as a detailed analysis of intercultural exchange between these two groups during the period of 1830-1920. The first online working meetings have already taken place, marking the beginning of this insightful research collaboration.
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Berenika Szymanski-Düll and Jorit Hopp were invited by Martina Groß to participate in her workshop “Theater auf Reisen: Transnationale Theatergeschichtsschreibung und migrierendes Wissen” (Theatre on the Move. Transnational Theatre Historiography and Migrating Knowledge) at the Institute for Media, Theatre and Popular Culture at the University of Hildesheim. While Berenika Szymanski-Düll spoke about conceptual consideration of migration and touring, Jorit Hopp introduced the challenges and possibilities of historical network analysis in relation to the migration of theatre professionals.
Staff changes
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Our team has undergone some changes in the past few months. Lisa Skwirblies, our postdoc, has been offered a professorship at the University of Amsterdam. We congratulate Lisa on this new career step and are delighted that she will remain with our project as an affiliated member. Christina Lagao, who provided administrative support to the team, and our research assistant Ursula Maier have left to pursue new opportunities. We wish them all the best for the future.
We are pleased to welcome two new members to our team. Annette Ohlenhardt has accepted a position as coordinator of the ERC projects at the Department Kunstwissenschaften (School of Arts) and will support our team in financial and administrative aspects. Isabella Lorenz has joined us as a new and excellent research assistant.
Workshop
Jens Jorit Hopp
Jorit Hopp at the workshop “Data Literacy und Data Criticism in Theatre Studies”
Is it still enough to be source literate? As theatre historians, we know how to work with various historical sources, from theatre photographs to police records. In the last few decades, we have begun to work more and more with digitalized sources, digital archives and databases, and data and metadata-driven approaches are playing an increasingly important role in the research landscape of the humanities. It is therefore perhaps time to become data literate in addition to source literate? But what would it even mean to be data literate as a theatre scholar?
These and similar questions were the focus of the workshop “Data Literacy und Datenkritik in den Theaterwissenschaften: ein Manifest“ organized by Nora Probst from the Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung in Cologne and Franziska Voss from the Fachinformationsdienst Darstellende Künste in Frankfurt, which took place from 24 to 25 November 2023 at Schloss Wahn. In addition to interesting insights into the digitalization practices of the collection in Cologne and input from experts in related disciplines, the workshop was particularly shaped by joint discussions on the special needs, but also skills of theatre scholars in dealing with research data. Jorit Hopp took part in this workshop and represented T-MIGRANTS in the discussions and in the initial work on a data literacy manifesto for theatre studies.
Workshop
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Sources – Data – Research: The Paul S. Ulrich Data Collection and its Scientific Use
The annual digital session “Collection meets Research” took place for the fourth time on 1 December 2023. This year's focus was on the extent to which collection data can also be understood as research data, and the challenges and requirements associated with this. In this context, our T-MIGRANTS project, represented by Berenika Szymanski-Düll and Jorit Hopp, together with Patrick Aprent (Austrian Academy of Sciences) and Magret Berger (Centre for Historical Research at the IGLR in St. Pölten) conducted a workshop entitled “Sources - Data - Research: The Paul S. Ulrich Data Collection and its Scientific Use”. The focus was on the extensive collection and database of the librarian and theatre historian Paul S. Ulrich, which is characterised by a wealth of information from theatre almanacs and is now available to researchers. Using three different projects as examples, the workshop showed how Paul S. Ulrich's collection is being used in current research projects. It also demonstrated how the digital processing, analysis and visualisation of this data offers new approaches to theatre history research, but also the challenges this brings.
For the full programme and more information, click here:
https://home.uni-leipzig.de/gtw-ag-archiv/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Programm_Sammlung_trifft_Forschung4_final-PP.pdf
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
T-MIGRANTS at the meeting of the WG Historiography
The T-MIGRANTS project, represented by Jorit Hopp and Berenika Szymanski-Düll, participated in the Historiography Working Group workshop of the Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft (GTW) held at the University of Bern from 16 to 17 November. Berenika Szymanski-Düll spoke about the challenges of digital theatre historiography using the T-MIGRANTS database as an example, while Jorit Hopp presented his PhD project on migrant networks.
Lecture Series
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
From Research to Classroom.
We are delighted to announce that our research is now finding its way
into the classroom. In the lecture series "Theatre and Migration", which
will take place every Wednesday from 16:00 to 18:00 during the winter
semester, Berenika Szymanski-Düll will give an insight into the work of
our research project and shed light on the relationship between theatre
and migration in the past and present. The lectures will examine the
phenomenon of 'migration' as an important cultural practice, introduce
its aesthetics and question the representation of migrants in theatre.
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
T-MIGRANTS at the conference “Polish Theatre Beyond Borders”
On 26-27 September, the Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute in Warsaw hosted the conference “Polish Theatre Beyond Borders: Culture, Identity and Community”. At the invitation of Prof. Karolina Prykowska-Michalak, Berenika Szymanski-Düll gave the opening lecture in which she introduced the concept of "theatre migrant".
ATEACOMP 2023 in Buenos Aires
Vanesa Cotroneo
T-MIGRANTS at the XI Argentinian and International Conference of the Argentinian Association of Comparative Theatre, 20.-23.9.2023
Every two years, the Argentinian Association of Comparative Theatre (Asociación Argentina de Teatro Comparado - ATEACOMP) organises an Argentinian and international conference, alternating between different national universities in the South American country. This year, the XI Conference was held at the “Dr. Raúl H. Castagnino” Institute of Performing Arts of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Buenos Aires, from 20 to 23 September, in a hybrid format under the title “La investigación desde el teatro, el teatro desde la investigación. A 240 años de la creación del teatro La Ranchería”. The activities of the conference took place in different spaces, from the YouTube channel to the Cultural Centre for Cooperation (CCC), but also in the Institute of Performing Arts (IAE) / Cultural Centre Paco Urondo (CCPU), and in theatre spaces such as Teatro Picadero, Teatro El Extranjero, Timbre 4. They all play an important role in the theatre culture of the city.
Our ERC project T-MIGRANTS was present at this conference with a paper entitled “Migrantes teatrales de Europa en Argentina entre 1850 y 1919: redes, dilemas y políticas culturales” (“Theatre Migrants from Europe in Argentina between 1850 and 1919: networks, dilemmas, and cultural policies”) by Vanesa Cotroneo. The panel was chaired by the current president of ATEACOMP, Natacha Koss, and included other papers on theatre and territoriality.
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
T-MIGRANTS at the forum “PERFORMANCE – PRODUCTION – DATA. Modelling and Communicating Event-Related Information”, CnFdI
From 14 to 15 September 2023, the Institute for Theatre Studies at the University of Leipzig hosted the forum “PERFORMANCE - PRODUCTION - DATA. Modelling and Communicating Event-Related Information”, organised by the Task Areas “Cultural Research Data Academy” and “Standards, Data Quality and Curation”. The aim of the forum was to promote interdisciplinary exchange on the collection, aggregation and enrichment of event-related data and the development of appropriate data models. It also discussed issues of artistic research and data literacy, synergies between disciplines and their infrastructures for (meta-)data and research data. At this conference, Berenika Szymanski-Düll and Jorit Hopp introduced the concept of the database of our research project and presented its current state in their joint lecture “T-MIGRANTS: Theatermigrations and their Data”. For more information see:
https://nfdi4culture.de/events/performance-production-data-modeling-and-communicating-event-related-information.html
T-MIGRANTS at the IFTR Accra 2023 Conference
Vanesa Cotroneo
ERC T-MIGRANTS project at the IFTR conference
Our ERC T-MIGRANTS project was represented at this year’s IFTR conference by Vanesa Cotroneo and Lisa Skwirblies. The conference, entitled “The Stories We Tell – Myth, Myth Making & Performance”, took place in Accra, Ghana, from 24th-28th of July.
Lisa presented her contribution “Embodied Fabulations – Performing Theatre Historiography within and against the Archive in Amanda Piña’s EXOTICA” at the curated panel of the Working Group Historiography. Her paper highlighted methodological questions of theatre historiography in relation to questions of migration, diaspora, and decoloniality through a concept she coined ‘embodied fabulation’. Vanesa’s paper, entitled “European Migration and National Theatre in Argentina (1850-1918): From the Myth of the Promised Land to the Struggles for Legitimation”, was presented in a general panel on “Performative Explorations of Migration and Myths” and focused on two cases of European theatre migrants who, after arriving in the South American country, encountered difficulties in dealing with the Argentinian internal gap between the immigration law policy and its practice. This struggle is also reflected aesthetically in the theatrical productions of the time.
Organised by Prof. Awo Mana Asiedu and Dr. Ekua Ekumah from the School of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana, the 2023 IFTR´s Conference fostered fruitful discussions and productive dialogues, and offered three inspiring keynotes with a focus on the Global South (Ato Quayson, Jisha Menon, Sarah Dorgabadzi) addressing issues of multilingualism, eco cosmopolitanism, and storytelling as methodology. Of particular interest to the T-MIGRANTS project was the launch of The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration, edited by Yana Meerzon and S. E. Wilmer (forthcoming autumn 2023). Finally, the IFTR´s conference was an excellent opportunity to celebrate the annual gathering of the international community of theatre scholars from around the globe, who, in the setting of a vibrant city like Accra, also had the chance to join several cultural activities, including Ghanian theatre, storytelling events, concerts, an event about food and migration, and the IFTR´s farewell dinner.
Workshop
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Part II: Polish Theatre History from the Perspective of Migration
On 25-26 May 2023, the second part of our workshop "Polish Theatre History from the Perspective of Migration" took place in Warsaw, this time in cooperation with the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The aim of the workshop was to continue the work started in November and to prepare a joint publication. The first drafts of the articles were discussed intensively in a small group. Thanks to all participants for a productive and enriching time.
Participants: Dorota Fox, Dorota Jarząbek-Wasyl, Agata Łuksza, Ewa Partyga, Karolina Prykowska-Michalak, Mariola Szydłowska, Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Vanesa Cotroneo joins T-MIGRANTS
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Vanesa Cotroneo has become part of our team as of 1 February
We are delighted to announce that Vanesa Cotroneo has become part of our
team as of 1 February. She will be working on a PhD thesis in the
T-MIGRANTS project, which deals with theatre and migration between
Europe and Argentina focusing on the role of cultural policy.
Before joining us, Vanesa studied English & Comparative Literature,
Theatre and Media at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), and at the
National University of La Plata (UNLP), Argentina; later, she made the
Master of Arts The Americas/ Las Américas at the Friedrich Alexander
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU). During the last years, she
worked in several projects about theatre, literature, culture and
digitization, and received Erasmus and DAAD Scholarships.
Workshop
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Polish Theatre History from the Perspective of Migration
Poland’s history is marked by partitions, uprisings, wars, conflicts, and occupations, and is thus closely intertwined with the history of migration. Foreign rules, political oppression, but also population growth and poverty caused thousands of Poles to leave their homeland, which disappeared from the map of Europe for many years (1772-1918). Due to the partitions, this already strongly multicultural and multireligious region was itself also marked by waves of immigration.
Among the emigrants and immigrants were also many theatre professionals. While names such as Adam Mickiewicz, or Helena Modrzejewska are firmly rooted in national memory, others have been forgotten or slipped through the cracks of national theatre historiographies. Considering this, the T-MIGRANTS project invited Polish theatre historians to rethink Polish theatre history – especially the period from 1830-1918 – from the perspective of migration.
In collaboration with Karolina Prykowska-Michalak (University of Lodz) and her research project "TEATRALNE DZIEDZICTWO POLSKICH MIGRANTÓW", which focuses on Polish migrants in theatre from a contemporary perspective, we held a workshop at the Museum in Rydlówka near Krakow from 24 to 26 November 2022. The contributions and the discussions of the workshop dealt, on the one hand, with various phenomena of theatre migration in the 19th century, stressing in particular the difficulty of a clear conceptual demarcation between migration and the practice of touring with regard to some biographies of Eastern European theatre practitioners. On the other hand, they also addressed the specifics of the Polish history elaborating the multiple identities and border crossings connected with it, and uncovered a number of unknown or forgotten names. Furthermore, through the close exchange with researchers on contemporary theatre, it was not only possible to identify thematic parallels and historical differences, but also to discuss crucial theoretical and methodological approaches. The workshop will be continued in May 2023 aiming to prepare a publication of the results.
Workshop
Lisa Skwirblies
“Thinking Migration and Postmigration in Europe through Colonialism, Empire, and Race”, November 7th and 8th 2022
In November, the T-Migrants project held a workshop on the topic of migration that focused on issues such as colonization, racialization, and imperialism. The premise of the workshop was that the long-standing histories of empire and colonialism have had a deep and to this day under-researched impact on how we perceive and talk about migration today. Instead of focusing on mobility and border-crossing in terms of nation-states, we extended the concept of the state and its associated political community to be congruent with imperial boundaries instead. This allowed us to research migration as part of the colonial project and as a “colonial tool of governing the population in racial, ethnic, national, religious, and cultural terms” (Gutierrez Rodriguez 2018). In other words, looking at migration through the framework of colonialism and empire rather than the nation-state, those labelled as “migrants” become an integral part of European history rather than its internal “other”. Participants: Swati Arora, Azadeh Sharifi, meLe Yamomo, Yael Koutouan, Anika Marschall, Lizzie Stewart, Priyanka Basu, Lisa Skwirblies, Berenika Szymanski-Düll, Jorit Hopp.
Beatriz Magno and Yan Lin join T-MIGRANTS
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
New research assistants at T-MIGRANTS
We are happy to welcome Beatriz Magno and Yan Lin to our team. Since
November, both have been helping us to feed our database T-MIGRANTS with
new data on theatre migrants.
GTW Congress 2022
Jorit Jens Hopp
T-MIGRANTS at the GTW Congress MATTERS OF URGENCY in Berlin, 28.09-01.10.2022
At this year's GTW Congress at the Freie Universität in Berlin, our research project was represented with a curated panel on 29 September. Under the title MIGRATION MATTERS, the T-MIGRANTS-team gave insights into their work: Berenika Szymanski-Düll introduced the project and its goals and discussed the concept and range of topics of mobility using different case studies, then Jorit Hopp argued in his presentation for the application of social and historical network analysis methods to research historical theatre migration
Visit
https://matters-of-urgency.de/ for more information.
New Publication
Lisa Skwirblies
Theaterwissenschaft postkolonial/dekolonial
The edited collection "Theaterwissenschaft postkolonial/dekolonial. Eine
kritische Bestandsaufnahme" by Azadeh Sharifi and Lisa Skwirblies poses
the question what the "decolonisation of the university" could mean for
the field of German theatre studies. The editors invited artists,
activist, and academics to respond to the issue and urgency of
postcolonial and decolonial questions, actions, and aesthetics in
relation to theatre studies and its teaching and research methods. The
contributions are in German and open access available under:
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5553-7/theaterwissenschaft-postkolonial/dekolonial/
Job Vacancy
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
PhD Positon in the ERC-project T-MIGRANTS (m/f/x)
We are offering a PhD position in our project. The candidate will be
expected to pursue research related to the themes of T-MIGRANTS focusing
on the objectives of the project and is required to develop a case study
on European theatre migrants in the area of South America.
IFTR 2022 Reykjavik
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
T-MIGRANTS at the IFTR World Congress in Reykjavik, 20.-24.6.2022
This year, the World Congress of the International Federation for
Theatre Research took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, from 20th to 24th of
June. Our research project was well represented at the congress: Jorit
Hopp presented the first research results on networks in the Habsburg
Empire in the New Scholars Forum with a focus on k.k. Theater nächst der
Burg, Lisa Skwirblies gave an insight into her sub-project on
Coloniality of Theatre Migration in a general panel, and Berenika
Szymanski-Düll presented the project's database as part of the working
group "Digital Humanities".
CALL FOR PAPERS
Lisa Skwirblies
Thinking Migration and Postmigration in Europe through Colonialism, Empire, and Race
Workshop on 7 th and 8 th of November 2022
Institute for Theatre Studies,
Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich
Organized by the ERC-Project “T-Migrants”
Migration has been a highly popular topic within the discipline of theatre and performance studies
for years. The most recent events - the war in the Ukraine – brought migration once more into the
limelight of public concern and academic discussion. Moreover, with hundreds of Nigerian students
from the Ukraine stuck at the Polish border and refused entrance to the EU, public debates in
Europe about so called “deserving” and “undeserving” migrants and the racialization of the figure of
the migrant sparked off once more. Sociologist Gurminder K. Bhambra (2017) has pointed out, that
this distinction “renders invisible the long-standing histories of empire and colonialism that already
connect those migrants, or citizens, with Europe” (369). Extending the concept of the state and its
associated political community to be congruent with imperial boundaries instead, allows us to
research migration as part of the colonial project and as a “colonial tool of governing the population
in racial, ethnic, national, religious, and cultural terms” (Gutierrez Rodriguez 2018). In other words,
looking at migration through the framework of colonialism and empire rather than the nation-state,
those labelled as “migrants” become an integral part of European history rather than its external
“other”.
Little research in our field focused on migration and post-migration has so far studied these
phenomena through the lens of colonialism, empire, and race. The historiography of theatre
migration, for example, often ignores the fact that those European theatre makers who migrated in
the nineteenth century to Abya Yala, the land known to us as the US, migrated to a country that
came into being based on the dispossession and displacement of the indigenous population. In that
sense, theatre migrants from Europe would also need to be understood as (at least partly) complicit
in the settler colonial project of the US. Similarly, does most of the theatre scholarship on
contemporary post-migrant theatre and multicultural theatre in Europe depart from a national
framework ignoring the fact that “European states have been multicultural for as long as they have
been imperial” (Bhambra 2017:236). Subsequently, contemporary discourses and scholarly debates
on multicultural and post-migrant theatre would benefit from a critical engagement with the
question how these forms of theatre “affected discourses of colonial representation in (European)
theatre” (Sharifi 2018:54) today.
This workshop aims at introducing the analytical categories colonialism, empire, and race for theatre
studies’ research on migration and postmigration. The workshop addresses the following questions:
What changes in our understanding of migration and post-migration once we think these
phenomena through the concepts of colonialism, empire and race? What kind of new understanding
of theatre migration and post-migrant theatre emerges once the nation-state and the colonies are
positioned in the same analytical framework? What does a theatre history that is told through the
analytical framework of colonialism, empire, and race tell us about the postcolonial and multicultural
present of European theatre today?
We welcome historiographical contributions as well as papers on contemporary theatre
performances and discourses dealing with topics of migration and asylum. We strongly encourage
postgraduate students to apply.
Possible topics for this workshop are:
- The entanglement of the histories of colonialism and migration in theatre research
- Postcolonial and decolonial views on (post-)migrant theatre
- Critical readings of the concept race in theatre research on migration and theatre
- The impact of postcolonial and decolonial theory for the study of migration and theatre migration and vice versa
- Decolonizing theatre research and theatre discourses on migration/asylum/refuge
- Postcolonial readings of the concepts “migrants”, “citizen”, “theatre migration”, “post-migration theatre”
Instead of presentations, the two-day workshop will be based on a discussion of pre-circulated
papers. A publication of selected papers is planned. Travel cost will be reimbursed and
accommodation for the duration of the workshop provided.
If you are interested in participating, please send your abstract (300 words max.) and a short bio till
15th of July to:
l.skwirblies@lmu.de
You can download the pdf of this article
here
Workshop
Jorit Jens Hopp
Workshop on theatre almanac and theatre journal database of Paul Ulrich, 25 May 2022
The search for new data on European theatre migrants of the 19th century often leads us into the depths of archives and libraries, but the exchange of data and methods with colleagues is also essential for a systematic and comprehensive approach. So we were pleased to welcome Paul S. Ulrich, as well as Patrick Aprent and Magret Berger to a workshop in Munich on 25 May 2022. Paul S. Ulrich gave us an insight into the scope, functioning, and structure of his theatre almanac and theatre journal database and explained the historical context of the underlying sources. We are looking forward to being able to use his data for the research purposes of T-Migrants and to him making it available to us for our database. In the course of the workshop we were already able to see, through the presentations of Patrick Aprent and Magret Berger, whose work is based on theatre almanacs and theatre journal database of Paul Urlich, how the data can be used with regard to research on the mobility of the theatre entrepreneur Anna Blumlacher (1823-1907).
In the discussion that followed, questions about the interoperability and sustainability of database structures emerged as central problem areas.
We are looking forward to a further exchange of data and ideas with Paul S. Ulrich, Patrick Aprent, and Magret Berger in the future.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
For the workshop VIEWS ON POLISH THEATRE HISTORY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF
MIGRATION, 1830-1918
24-26 November 2022 Krakow,
Theatre Museum
The T-Migrants project is organising a two-part workshop in Poland on:
VIEWS ON POLISH THEATRE HISTORY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MIGRATION,
1830-1918.
The Call for Papers can be found
here
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
As part of the lecture series "Forschung im Dialog" of the Dahlem
Humanities Center at Freie Universität Berlin, Berenika Szymanski-Düll
was invited to present and discuss her ERC research project T-MIGRANTS
on 4 May 2022.
For more information click
here.
Lecture
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Public lecture at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm
University
On 28 April 2022, Berenika Szymanski-Düll gave a guest lecture at the
Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University. In her
talk "T-MIGRANTS – Perspectives on Historical Theatre Migration
Research" she introduced the multifaceted concept of theatre migration.
The lecture took place in presence, but was simultaneously transmitted
via zoom.
For more information click
here.
Conference Report
Lisa Skwirblies
Conference Report: Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts
The conference Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts organised by Prof. Berenika Szymanski-Düll took place 29-31st of March 2022 online and brought together a great range of international scholars working on the topic of theatre migration in the 19th century. The papers of the conference addressed a large variety of theatre migration phenomena: From individual case studies of particular actors, actresses and theatre makers migrating from Europe to the US, South America, India, as well as between European countries to larger phenomena like the establishment of whole theatrical genres as a result of theatre migration. Ruthie Abeliovich’s keynote, which opened the conference, discussed the migration of the Jewish playwright Moyshe Hurwitz from Romania to the US and his impact on the expanding Yiddish theatre scene in New York at the end of the nineteenth century. On the consecutive day, Chris Balme and Anirban Ghosh both approached the question of theatre migration through the impact it had on so called local audiences in India. Balme discussed the role of British touring theatre for the phenomenon of theatre migration through the work of Maurice E. Bandmann while Ghosh’s paper focused on the constitution of the modern circus in India and a whole new visual and performative culture. The presentations of Sarit Cofman-Simhon and Susanne Korbel discussed the emigration routes of Jewish artists from Europe to the US and the impact their emigration has had on the growing popular theatre scene there. Samipendra Banerjee and Lisa Skwirblies addressed the history of theatre migration through a postcolonial approach while Kristen McCleary’s and Martina Groß’s presentation raised the question of a particular female theatre historiography focusing on specific experiences that female theatre makers have had in terms of theatre migration. The following conference day was opened by the presentations of Danijela Weber-Kapusta and Jorit Hopp, that both discussed the theatre migration routes, patterns and networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, followed by the paper of Karolina Prykowska-Michalak on the individual emigration routes of the director Ryszard Ordynski and the paper of Rikkard Hoogland on theatre migration between Sweden and Finland. The conference was concluded by a panel on digital humanities and data collection with presentations by Berenika Szymanski-Düll and Hanieh Arjomand-Fard on the data base of the T-MIGRANTS project and by Paul S. Ulrich and Patrick Aprent on theatre almanacs as data banks.
A recurrent topic in all the discussions was the issue of language that played a crucial role in theatre migration and the theatrical performance genres it inspired. Language determined the audience of the performances like in the Yiddish popular theatres of New York, the theatre migration routes in the Habsburg monarchy along German speaking theatre institutions or the migration patterns of actors and actresses on the border between Sweden and Finland. In some cases, migrants were accepted, when performing in their own language, in other cases they had to learn the language of their new home country and it was not always accepted when actors had an accent or spoke in their own language. This is little surprising if one takes into consideration that the constitution of the nation-state and its borders was very much based on the question of language. The presentations showed the extent to which this issue was also negotiated on the theatrical stage. Even there, where language did not play a role, like in the circus, one could argue that similar issues are at stake in that in avoiding the issue of language the circus could attract a larger audience.
Another common denominator of many papers was the querying of the term theatre migrant. What or who constitute a theatre migrant? Anirban Ghosh addressed the issue by pointing out that migration is always a transgression of local restrictive boundaries and reminded the conference participants that who is deemed a migrant, an expat or a refugee depends strongly on the historically and culturally specific discourse on migration, nation state borders and national identity. Because there are nation-states, there are borders, and often these borders are policed and controlled and embedded in a racialised discourse on migration and asylum.
What cristallised in the discussion is a common struggle in the archival research as migration similar to theatre is considered a fleeting phenomenon which leaves little material traces. This became even more evident in the panel on “female historiographies”, where the marginalization of migrant voices in theatre history was doubled by the experiences of female theatre migrants. However, the question of the archive also raised the issue of privilege and the danger of the theatre historian falling into the trap of only researching those theatre migrants who were already privileged enough to have or build an enterprise and consequently leave enough archival traces to be considered a case study.
The question of methodology also held a prominent role on the last day in the panel on data collection and theatre migration. Issues around the sources of the collected data where addressed as well questions around the establishment of a new data base and its scope. Here, disagreement arose about whether a project-specific data bank should be narrow in focus or as wide as possible, so that future researchers also would have a chance to approach the data bank with their own research question. While one could feel the great excitement about the new technological possibilities that Digital Humanities promises especially in regards to data collection and data visualization, the discussion also brought up critical questions regarding the methodological promises and pitfalls of quantitative research. What really are the new digital methodologies adding to our existing historiographical methods? What are they improving and where do they possibly fall behind the academic rigor that historiographical methodology has established over the years? To what extent might the quantitative aspect of data collection, its focus on metrics, even repeat some of the arresting gestures that nation-states have ever since their constitution performed through their border control and in their imperialist projects for ruling territories, people and knowledges? To what extent do digital humanities projects that collect data from the Global South for the knowledge production in the Global North repeat colonial practices of resource extraction and theft? The lively discussion on the pros and cons of digital humanities showed that it will take another conference to address these issues in more depth. As a concluding thought everyone agreed that data collection in a small discipline such as Theatre Studies only makes sense, if the data bases can be combined or connected so that a larger body of data can be accessed by theatre scholars around the world.
The Rise and Fall of Moyshe Hurwitz
Lisa Skwirblies
Keynote by Ruthie Abeliovich (The University of Haifa, Israel) at the
conference Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories,
Impacts
In her keynote, Ruthie Abeliovich explores the emigration routes of
theatre impresario and playwright Moyshe Hurwitz’s (1844-1910). His
theatre had a pivotal role in the transnational scene of popular Yiddish
theatre, in eastern Europe and the US at the turn of the 20th century.
In the first years of the Yiddish theatre, Hurwitz dominated the New
York theatre scene, as resident dramatists of various theatre troupes.
The repertoire of Yiddish stages across Europe (mainly in Galicia and
the Pale of Settlement) and in the US heavily relied on the works of
Hurwitz. In an informed process of translation of familiar plots,
appropriation of earlier sources, imitation and adaptation of European
music and drama, Hurwitz created a distinctly Jewish body of work that
communicated with its surrounding cultures. His works brought biblical
stories and Jewish folklore to the popular stage, juxtaposing Jewish
themes with non-Jewish elements. The hybrid character of Hurwitz’s
theatre reflects acculturation processes that Jews experienced at the
turn of the 20th century. Abeliovich´s presentation highlights the
impact Hurwitz´s theatre has had on the New York popular theatre scene,
alongside the continuing presence of his plays in eastern-Europe.
Ruthie Abeliovich is an assistant professor at the University of Haifa
and principal investigator of the ERC project DYBUKK, which queries the
themes, forms and practices of the popular Yiddish theatre at the turn
of the century. Abeliovich is the author of Possessed Voices: Aural
Remains from Modernist Hebrew Theatre (SUNY 2019), finalist for the
Jordan Schnitzer Book Award (AJS, 2020), co-editor co-editor (with Linda
Ben-Zvi and Sharon Aronson Lehavi) of A Stage of Their Own: 7 American
Feminist Plays (Hebrew), co-editor (with Edwin Seroussi) of Borderlines:
Essays on Maps and The Logic of Place (Sciendo, 2019).
See video in fullscreen
here
Conference
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts
Conference organised by Berenika Szymanski-Düll
(CAS Young Center, ERC-Project T-MIGRANTS)
29 to 31 March 2022
With the advent of steamships and railways, the phenomenon of mobility,
and especially the phenomenon of emigration, took on a new dimension in
the nineteenth century. In Europe, intra-European migration and
emigration overseas proceeded side by side: millions of Europeans left
their homelands and moved to foreign countries and continents. Many
people from the theatre business were involved in this process. Their
emigration was usually difficult, involved deprivation and triggered
xenophobia, but at the same time it increased the potential for
creativity and led to major institutional and aesthetical
transformations.
In this conference we are looking for nuanced
investigations of the motivations and experiences of European theatre
migrants, we reconstruct their routes and connections across geographic
and cultural borders and ask for the impacts their emigrations had for
the theatre (business) of the time.
Registration:
info@cas.lmu.de
See the whole Conference Programme here
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Of Mass Migrations, Touring and the Question of the Ensemble
“Of Mass Migrations, Touring and the Question of the Ensemble” Berenika Szymanski-Düll On 3rd of March this year, Berenika Szymanski-Düll was invited by the theatre studies department of the University Bern to present a paper as part of the ongoing lecture series “Ensemble”. Her presentation was titled “Von Massenmigrationen, Tourneen und der Frage nach Ensemble - Ein Blick auf das 19. Jahrhundert aus transnationaler Perspektive” (Of Mass Migrations, Touring and the Question of the Ensemble - A Glimpse of the 19th Century from a Transnational Perspective) and discussed the larger concept “ensemble” while also querying the specific ways in which ensembles work in times of transnational mobility in the 19th century.
Presentation
Lisa Skwirblies
At the Symposium "Undoing Mastery" earlier this year, Lisa Skwirblies held a presentation on questions regarding postcolonial theories and decolonial discourses in the field of theatre studies and theatre historiography together with Prof. Azadeh Sharifi. Part of the presentation was the question to what extent postcolonial theories can be a useful tool for the critical analysis of theatre migration and the so called postmigrant theatre.
Workshop
Jorit Jens Hopp
Migrations to and in East-Central Europe in the Long 19th Century – Backgrounds, Patterns and Outcomes
Workshop with Mathias Beer: „Migrationen nach und in Ostmitteleuropa im langen 19. Jahrhundert – Hintergründe, Formen und Ergebnisse.“ [Migrations to and in East-Central Europe in the Long 19th Century – Backgrounds, Patterns and Outcomes]
Conducting interdisciplinary research in different geographical and cultural contexts is one of the tasks of our research project. For this reason, it is important for us to enter into exchange and dialogue with different experts in order to learn from their knowledge and to put our ideas, concepts and results up for discussion. In this context, we invited Mathias Beer (Institut für donauschwäbische Geschichte und Landeskunde) to a workshop on 15 October 2021 to better understand the multi-layered processes of migration in East-Central Europe and their backgrounds. Beer thus contextualised the diverse migration movements in the context of the changing political map of the 19th century and explained the interplay of various push and pull factors. He also outlined the history of historical migration research as well as the variety of questions and approaches that historians have used and continue to use to track down the phenomenon of migration. As our research project also shows, this diversity is already reflected at the level of definitions of migration. In the subsequent discussion, in which we shared glimpses of our research, it became clear once again that migration as an overall phenomenon that permeates all areas of life, society and culture can only be understood more deeply through the interplay of different research traditions. From the perspective of migration research, it is therefore – as Beer stressed – very welcome that disciplines such as theatre studies contribute their specific questions, theoretical concepts, methods and specific source material to the discourse.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts
Conference organized by: Berenika Szymanski-Düll, LMU Munich, ERC-Project T-MIGRANTS
29 – 31 March 2022, Munich
Migration has always been part of human history, but with the advent of steamships and railways, the phenomenon of mobility, and especially the phenomenon of emigration, took on a new dimension in the nineteenth century. In Europe, intra-European migration and emigration overseas proceeded side by side: millions of Europeans left their homelands and moved – for economic, political or religious reasons – to foreign countries and continents, resulting in increasing crossing of borders and the entanglement of cultures in a time of strong nation-building processes. The theatre – one of the mass media of the day – was profoundly affected by this phenomenon. Many people from the theatre business, such as actors, dancers, opera singers, stage directors, playwrights, theatre managers and impresarios, were involved in this process. In the following, they are referred to as theatre migrants. Their emigration, which has been the subject of little research so far, was – like that of all other migrants – usually difficult, involved deprivation and triggered xenophobia, but at the same time it increased the potential for creativity and brought about major institutional and aesthetical transformations within the booming theatre business of the time.
This first conference of the ERC research project T-MIGRANTS (www.t-migrants.com) aims to bring together international researchers working on the topic of migration within theatre. We are looking for nuanced investigations of the motivations, circumstances, experiences and actions of European theatre migrants – who spread all over the world – and the consequences of their emigrations in the period from 1850 to 1918. Within the conference, we want to discover forgotten actors and learn from their biographies. We will contextualise and discuss the problems, negotiations and tensions their migrations raised, reconstruct routes and connections across geographic, cultural and political borders and consider their crucial influence and impact on the theatre of the time. Regarding migration as an open-ended and dynamic process and identifying theatre migrants as important decision makers, we welcome papers that address these issues and, as far as possible, focus on a case study of specific theatre migrants. Topics covered may include:
- Individual decisions and motivations of emigration.
- Individual memories, reflexions and experiences on the emigration process, taking into account questions of gender, cultural identity, assimilation, integration, language, racism and nationalism.
- The (e)migration routes of individual theatre migrants.
- The role theatre migrants played within the societies of their new places of residence as well as their homelands.
- Interactions of theatre migrants with local artists and local institutions, and the consequences of these interactions.
- The formation of new institutions and the establishment as well as the significance of multi-site networks by theatre migrants.
We ask for proposals for conference contributions (20 minutes) in the form of an abstract of no more than 300 words explaining the relation to the conference topic and outlining the research from which the contribution is derived, and a brief academic biography.
Please send your submissions to Berenika Szymanski-Düll (
Berenika.Szymanski@lrz.uni-muenchen.de) by 14 November 2021. Successful applicants will be notified in early December 2021.
The conference will take place at the Center for Advanced Studies in Munich, Germany.
Travel and accommodation costs will be covered for participants who present a paper.
Publication of selected papers is planned.
Workshop
Workshop on “Urheberrecht” and “Copyright” with Marc Ulrich
Since we work a lot with historical sources and visual material in our project and are developing a database on theatre migrants in a period from 1850-1918, we are always facing the question of publishing documents, photos and data. For this reason, we had a workshop with Marc Ulrich on 28 April 2021, who introduced us to the basics of “Urheberrecht” and “Copyright”.
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
“Mobility, Migration and Transnational Theatre History(s).”
On 26 March 2021, at the invitation of Hasibe Kalkan, Berenika Szymanski-Düll gave a lecture entitled “Mobility, Migration and Transnational Theatre History(s).” via Zoom at the University of Istanbul, thus providing insight into our ERC project T-MIGRANTS.
Workshop
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
“Migration in Research, Mobility in the Archive – Of Searching and Finding”
Together with Dorothea Volz from the Theatre Collection of the University of Cologne (Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung der Universität zu Köln), Berenika Szymanski-Düll held a workshop entitled “Migration in Research, Mobility in the Archive - On Searching and Finding” as part of the digital session “Collection meets Research” of the working group Archiv (gtw) on 20 November 2020.
Each collection has its own system – and each researcher a different interest, which is rarely reflected in the archive structures that have evolved over decades and which repeatedly emerges as a problem in practice. For example, when researchers deal with questions of mobility of theatre artists, dramas or aesthetics, scholars and archives are faced with special challenges. How to search for the non-settled? How to catalogue migrations? This workshop was dedicated to the problems of researching and preserving mobilities using the example of theatre studies research practice (T-MIGRANTS, LMU) and the archival practice of the Theatre Studies Collection (UzK). The aim was to stimulate a rethinking of the existing structures – both on the archival and the academic side – and to formulate possible solutions.
Research Workshop
Research Workshop with the Bavarian State Library
On 17 December 2020, we had a research workshop with Milena Fein from the Bavarian State Library. In this online workshop we learned how to improve and expand our research on migration on a digital level by using different databases in their own special way.
Photo kindly provided by IATC(HK) and SIBMAS 
Universität Paderborn, Johannes Pauly 
Wikipedia 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:South_America_(1909).jpg 
https://wissenschaftliche-sammlungen.de/de/termine/sammlung-trifft-forschung 
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayerische_Staatsbibliothek 
