Emeritus Professor Joanne Tompkins
Emeritus Professor
School of Communication and Arts
*
Researcher biography
Professor Joanne Tompkins is now retired but she continues to research and consult on research and research strategy.
She served a three year term seconded to the Australian Research Council as Executive Director of the Humanities and Creative Arts panel, concluding in 2020. She currently sits on the executive/advisory board of several organisations including the Academy of Humanities, the International Federation for Theatre Research, and two ARC Centres of Excellence.
Her research interests include spatial theories and virtual reality; post-colonial, intercultural, and multicultural drama, literature, and theory; performance theories; and feminist performance.
Her current research includes 3D visualisation and modelling of theatre spaces; the spatial theory of heterotopia; space in Australian and Canadian theatre; database of Australian performance; multicultural theories and drama, and intercultural performance.
She is the author of articles on: Spatial theory and virtual reality; post-colonial, multicultural, and intercultural drama and theory; Australian drama and literature and Canadian drama;
She is author of: Theatre's Heterotopias: Space and the Analysis of Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; and Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006.
She is co-author of: A Global Doll's House: Ibsen and Distant Visions. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 (with Julie Holledge, Frode Helland and Jonathan Bollen); Women's Intercultural Performance, Routledge, 2000 (with Julie Holledge); and Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, Routledge, 1996 (with Helen Gilbert).
She is editor of: Theatre Journal, "Space and the Geographics of Theatre," a special issue of Modern Drama, 2004; "Theatre and the Canadian Imaginary," a special issue of Australasian Drama Studies, 1996.
She is co-editor of: Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 (with Anna Birch); Site-Specificity and Mobility, a Special Issue of Contemporary Theatre Review 2012 (with Anna Birch); Performance and Design, a special issue of Australasian Drama Studies (with Andrew Filmer and Miranda Heckenberg) 2012;Modern Drama: Defining the Field, University of Toronto Press, 2003 (with Ric Knowles and WB Worthen); Modern Drama 1999-2005; Performing Women / Performing Feminisms: Interviews with International Women Playwrights (with Julie Holledge).
Publications
Books
Tompkins, Joanne, Holledge, Julie, Bollen, Jonathan and Xia, Liyang (2022). Visualising lost theatres: virtual praxis and the recovery of performance spaces. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/9781108583800
Holledge, Julie, Bollen, Jonathan, Helland, Frode and Tompkins, Joanne (2016). A global doll's house: Ibsen and distant visions. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/978-1-137-43899-7
Tompkins, Joanne (2014). Theatre's heterotopias: performance and the cultural politics of space. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137362124
Tompkins, Joanne E. (2006). Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9780230286245
Holledge, J. and Tompkins, J. E. (2000). Women's Intercultural Performance. London: Routledge.
Book Chapters
Tompkins, Joanne (2019). Heterotopia and the mapping of unreal spaces on stage. Foucault's theatres. (pp. 101-115) edited by Tony Fisher and Kélina Gotman. Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press.
Solga, Kim and Tompkins, Joanne (2019). The environment of theatre: ‘Home’ in the modern age. A cultural history of theatre in the modern age. (pp. 75-94) edited by Kim Solga. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Tompkins, Joanne (2017). Teaching spatial theory and theatre ‘site-specifically’. International Performance Research Pedagogies: Towards an Unconditional Discipline?. (pp. 163-174) edited by Sruti Bala, Milija Gluhovic, Hanna Korsberg and Kati Röttger. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-53943-0_12
Tompkins, Joanne (2014). Making the invisible visible: virtual stage props and Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus. Performing objects and theatrical things. (pp. 161-172) edited by Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy. Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137402455
Tompkins, Joanne (2013). Noëlle Janaczewska’s twenty-first-century theatre: explorations of Australian cultural constructs and theatrical form. Catching Australian theatre in the 2000s. (pp. 207-220) edited by Richard Fotheringham and James Smith. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi.
Tompkins, Joanne (2012). The 'Place' and practice of site-specific theatre and performance. Performing site-specific theatre: politics, place, practice. (pp. 1-17) edited by Anna Birch and Joanne Tompkins. Houndmills, Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137283498
Delbridge, Matthew and Tompkins, Joanne (2012). Reproduction, mediation, and experience : virtual reality, motion capture and early modern theatre. SPACE–EVENT–AGENCY–EXPERIENCE: open access epublication of the DREX Project Centre for Practice as Research in Theatre. (pp. 56-65) Tampere, Finland: University of Tampere.
Tompkins, Joanne (2010). Spatiality and contaminated land: Staging Maralinga. Halfway house the poetics of Australian spaces. (pp. 310-319) edited by Jennifer Rutherford and Barbara Holloway. Crawley, W.A., Australia: UWA.
Tompkins, Joanne (2010). Balancing the 'Local' and the 'Global' in theatre for the international stage: The stage adaptation of David Malouf's Johnno. The local meets the global in performance. (pp. 81-98) edited by Pirkko Koski and Melissa Sihra. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Harvey, Neal, Grehan, Helena and Tompkins, Joanne (2009). AusStage: From database of performing arts to a performing database of the arts. Resourceful reading: The new empiricism, eResearch and Australian literary culture. (pp. 325-333) edited by Katherine Bode and Robert Dixon. Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press.
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). Staging the imagined city in Australian theatre. Performance and the city. (pp. 187-203) edited by D. J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr and Kim Solga. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tompkins, Joanne (2008). Landscapes and Soundscapes in Noelle Janaczewska's Theatre. Songket; This territory/two plays by Noëlle Janaczewska. (pp. ix-xiv) edited by Noelle Janaczewska. Strawberry Hills, Sydney, N.S.W: Currency Press.
Tompkins, Joanne (2007). Performing history's unsettlement. Critical theory and performance. (pp. 71-84) edited by J. Reinelt and J. Roach. Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.: The University of Michigan Press.
Tompkins, J. E. (2006). Counter-monumentalising and Janis Balodis's The Ghost Trilogy. Unstable Ground: Performance and the Politics of Place. (pp. 81-93) edited by McAuley, Gay. Berlin: P.I.E. Peter Lang.
Harvey, N. A. and Tompkins, J. E. (2006). Virtual reality and negotiating problems of real theater space. Mapping Uncertain Territories: Space and Place in Contemporary Theater and Drama. (pp. 169-178) edited by T. Rommel and M. Schreiber. Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
Tompkins, Joanne (2006). Gendering space: The desert and the psyche in contemporary Australian theatre. Feminist Futures? Theatre, Performance, Theory. (pp. 190-208) edited by Elaine Aston and Geraldine Harris. New York, N.Y, United States: Palgrave Macmillan.
Tompkins, Joanne (2006). The Shape of a Life: Constructing the ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in Joan MacLeod’s The Shape of a Girl and Guillermo Verdecchia and Marcus Youssef’s A Line in the Sand. Theatre and autobiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice. (pp. 124-136) edited by Sherrill Grace and Jerry Wasserman. Penticton, British Columbia: Talonbooks.
Tompkins, Joanne (2005). Conflicting fields of vision: Performing self and other in two intercultural Shakespeare productions. A companion to Shakespeare and performance. (pp. 610-624) edited by Barbara Hodgdon and W. B. Worthen. Oxford: Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9780470996706.ch33
Tompkins, Joanne (2003). Yellow Fever, Yellow Claw, Yellow Peril: Performing the Fantasy of the. Performing National Identities: International Perspectives on Contemporary Canadian Theatre. (pp. 289-302) edited by Grace, Sherrill and Glaap, Albert-Reiner. Vancouver, Canada: Talonbooks.
Tompkins, J. E. (2001). "Fatherlands and Mother-tongues": Family Histories and Futures in Recent Australian and Canadian Multicultural Theatre. Siting the Other. (pp. 347-362) edited by M. Maufort and F. Bellarsi. Brussels: P.I.E.-Peter Lang.
Journal Articles
Bollen, Jonathan, Holledge, Julie and Tompkins, Joanne (2021). Putting virtual theatre models to work: ‘virtual praxis’ for performance research in theatre history. Theatre and Performance Design, 7 (1-2), 6-23. doi: 10.1080/23322551.2021.1925469
Tompkins, Joanne (2020). Roger Clegg, principal investigator, and Eric Tatham, developer. Reconstructing the Rose: 3D Computer Modelling Philip Henslowe’s Playhouse. Other. Renaissance and Reformation, 43 (1), 177-180. doi: 10.33137/rr.v43i1.34089
Tompkins, Joanne and Kastanis, Lazaros (2017). Staging supernatural creatures in a computer-based visualisation of London’s sixteenth-century Rose Theatre. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 13 (1), 1-17. doi: 10.1080/14794713.2017.1280306
Tompkins, Joanne (2015). Editorial comment: possible worlds. Theatre Journal, 67 (2), ix-xi. doi: 10.1353/tj.2015.0036
Delgado, Maria M. and Tompkins, Joanne (2015). Editing matters: an editorial. Contemporary Theatre Review, 25 (1), 11-16. doi: 10.1080/10486801.2015.1007759
Tompkins, Joanne (2013). National Performance: Representing Quebec from Expo 67 to Celine Dion. By Erin Hurley.. Theatre Survey, 54 (1), 141-143. doi: 10.1017/S0040557412000452
Tompkins, Joanne (2013). Performing ghosts in Australia: Ibsen and an example of Australian cultural translation. Ibsen Studies, 13 (1), 2-27. doi: 10.1080/15021866.2013.792663
Tompkins, Joanne (2013). Ros Merkin, ed. "Liverpool Playhouse: A Theatre and Its City". Modern Drama, 56 (3), 416-417. doi: 10.1353/mdr.2013.0034
Tompkins, Joanne (2012). Theatre's heterotopia and the site-specific production of Suitcase. TDR, 56 (2), 101-112. doi: 10.1162/DRAM_a_00169
Tompkins, Joanne (2011). Site-specific theatre and political engagement across space and time: The psychogeographic mapping of British Petroleum in Platform's And While London Burns. Theatre Journal, 63 (2), 225-243. doi: 10.1353/tj.2011.0048
Harvey, Neal, Grehan, Helena and Tompkins, Joanne (2010). 'Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar': Australian theatre blogging practice. Contemporary Theatre Review, 20 (1), 109-119. doi: 10.1080/10486800903225626
Tomkins, Joanne (2010). The politics of locating Othello in Finland. Nordic Theatre Studies, 22, 20-29.
Tompkins, Joanne E. (2009). Staging International Feminisms. Edited by Elaine Aston and Sue-Ellen Case. Contemporary Theatre Review, 19 (1 Special Issue: The Broadway Musical: New Approaches), 118-119. doi: 10.1080/10486800802556444
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). Review: Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s edited by Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly. Contemporary Theatre Review, 19 (3), 372-374. doi: 10.1080/10486800903000151
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). Urban entanglements in three African Canadian plays: Lorena Gale's Angelique, George Boyd's Consecrated Ground, and Andrew Moodie's Riot. Theatre Research in Canada, 30 (1-2), 17-36.
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). The politics of location in Othello, Djanet Sears's Harlem Duet, and Ong Keng Sen's Desdemona. Contemporary Theatre Review, 19 (3), 269-278. doi: 10.1080/10486800902985881
Tompkins, Joanne (2008). Adapting Australian novels for the stage: La Boite Theatre's versions of Last Drinks, Perfect Skin, and Johnno. Australian Literary Studies, 23 (3), 305-317.
Tompkins, Joanne (2007). Review: Staging social welfare. Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review (193), 112-115.
Tompkins, J. E. (2006). Remember the nation: Lorena Gale's Je me souviens. Canadian Theatre Review, 125, 56-61.
Harvey, N. and Tompkins, J. (2005). Theoretical methodologies and the advent of virtual analytical tools in theatre. Contemporary Theatre Review, 15 (4), 455-469. doi: 10.1080/10486800500280479
Tompkins, J. E. (2004). Review: The semiotics of theatre and drama, second edition by Keir Elam. Australasian Drama Studies, 44, 146-148.
Tompkins, J. E. (2004). Directing and producing theatre with the help of virtual reality. Scenography International (7), 1-5.
Tompkins, Joanne (2003). Canadian Theatre and Memorializing: Memorializing and counter-memorializing in The Death of General Wolfe, Angélique and Sled. Canadian Theatre Review (115), 5-11.
Tompkins, J. (2003). Space and the geographies of theatre: Introduction. Modern Drama, 46 (4), 537-541. doi: 10.3138/md.46.4.537
Tompkins, Joanne E. (2002). Review of the Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Etudes Théatrales/Essays in Theatre, 20 (2), 157-158.
Tompkins, J. E. (2001). Modern: Drama (defining the field), Part II. Modern Drama, 44 (1), 1-2.
Tompkins, J (2001). 'Homescapes' and identity reformations in Australian multicultural drama. Theatre Research International, 26 (1), 47-59. doi: 10.1017/S0307883301000050
Tompkins, J. E. (2001). Teaching Canadian Plays in Australia. Canadian Theatre Review, 105 (Winter), 27-28.
Tompkins, J. E. (2000). The Drama of South Africa, by Loren Kruger. Australasian Drama Studies, 37 (October), 124-126.
Tompkins, J. E. (1999). Review of Humphrey Bower, Adaptor, Natural Life. Australasian Drama Studies, 35 (October), 186-189.
Conference Papers
Tompkins, Joanne (2011). The use of virtual reality models in capturing the spatiality of early modern venues. 9th World Shakespeare Congress 2011, Prague, Czech Republic, 17-22 July, 2011.
Tompkins, Joanne and Erskine, Shona (2009). BoF: AusStage and the Aus-e-Stage Project: Collaborative eResearch in the performing arts. eResearch Australasia 2009, Sydney, Australia, 9 - 13 November, 2009. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia: The University of Queensland.
Tompkins, Joanne and Delbridge, Matt (2009). Using virtual reality modelling in cultural management, archiving and research. EVA 2009 London Conference, London, UK, 6-8 July 2009. Swindon, UK: British Informatics Society.
Tompkins, Joanne (2009). Virtual recreations of historical theatres: How VR meets theatre history. eResearch Australasia 2009, Sydney, Australia, 9 - 13 November 2009. Brisbane, Queensland, Australia: The University of Queensland.
Reference Entry
Tompkins, J. E. (2002). James Reaney.