EASTAP Annual Conference 2025

We are delighted to announce the EASTAP Annual Conference 2025, hosted by Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, under the theme Decentre | Distribute | Democratise. 

As host city, London has been a questionable centre for (among other things) commerce, business and finance; empire and rubrics of imperialism; popular expression and democratic governance; and theatre and the performing arts. What does it mean, now, to think of decentring, distribution and democratising? We ask this question not only in relation to our geo-political situation (in a major metropolis that is outside the European Union in a moment of global refiguring). It applies no less to our disciplinary areas – theatre, drama, performance, cultural production – and to Guildhall School itself, and its place in a Higher Education ecosystem as a training institution that conducts research, and a conservatoire invested in both continuity and change.

We invite proposals that explore the shifting ground of decentring, distribution and democratising, whether in terms of the formal constitution of artworks; processes of conception, realisation, circulation and consumption; the audiences and participants within artistic exchange; the industrial and institutional arrangements for theatre and performance; regimes and systems of training and preparation; the effects and affordances of technologies; matters of identity and cultural definition (whether individual, regional or national); the role of theatre and performance in social, cultural and political transaction; questions of entertainment and pleasure; and concerns about agency and value (however defined).

We encourage interdisciplinary approaches however they are conceived. We also encourage monodisciplinary submissions, as colleagues prefer. While the conference aims to perform its own decentring, it will operate as a gathering ground for discussion, sharing and collaboration among colleagues.