Pieter Verstraete
Dr. Pieter Verstraete is a Theater Scholar, currently residing in Berlin, Germany. Since 2019, he is a tenured Senior Lecturer (UD1) at the Arts, Culture and Media department of the University of Groningen. He is also Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Theatre and Performance (EJTP), elected ExCom member of EASTAP, and the current Chair of the MCAA Benelux Chapter. From September 2020 until March 2023, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft of the Freie Universität Berlin as PI of the ExiLives project. He has also been previously a member of the committees for music theatre in the Flemish Ministry of Culture, and opera in the Dutch Arts Council.
Between 2018 and 2019, Dr. Verstraete was working as a part-time Lecturer at the Theatre Studies Institute of the University of Amsterdam. Between 2012 and 2018, he was affiliated to various universities in Turkey. From 2010 until January 2012, he was a full-time tenured Lecturer at the Drama Department in Exeter. Before 2010, he taught at the Institute for Theatre Studies of the University of Amsterdam, as well as the Cultural Studies Department of the Radboud University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands).
His main research interests are in contemporary (music) theatre, socio-political, activist forms of performance and post-migration. He also works as a freelance theatre critic. In 2012, he received a Tübitak scholarship at Ankara University, a one-year Mercator-IPC Fellowship at Sabanci University and became an Honorary University Fellow to the University of Exeter. In 2013, he continued his research at the Migration Research Center of Istanbul Bilgi University with the support of Türkiye Burslari.
Verstraete’s first post-doc research project during his Mercator-IPC Fellowship was entitled ‘Turkish Post-Migrant Theatre in Transit: Transnational Pathways of Socio-Artistic Collaboration between Germany and Turkey’ in the thematic area of ‘Education’. During his Türkiye Burslari fellowship, he continued the postdoc research with a specific focus on music theatre and contemporary opera, under the title: “Post-Migration in Music Theatre: Listening at the Cultural Crossroads between Europe and Turkey”.
Currently, he is looking at the work of Turkish and Kurdish artists who collaborate with European ensembles or who work against censorship practices in Turkey to address socio-cultural issues like post-migration, exilic life and insurgency through theatre performances. His MSCA-Action, entitled "Exiled Lives on the Stage: Turkey’s Theatre Artists at the Crossroads of New Aesthetic Practices and Political Subjectivities" (acronym: ExiLives), gives him the opportunity to document the personal stories and artistic productions by exiled (theatre) artists from Turkey in Europe. The theatre arts are discussed for their utility in understanding new political subjectivities and aesthetic practices emerging from the exilic situation. The project runs a podcast, called Exiled Lives. For more information, please visit the project website at exiledlives.eu.
Pieter Verstraete holds a PhD degree in the Humanities from the Department of Theater Studies and the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis of the University of Amsterdam.
Supervisors: M.A. Bleeker, C.B. Balme, J. Lazardzig, G.K.H. Ley, B.P. van Heusden, M. Kiss, and A. Lagaay
Phone: 00491632240656
Between 2018 and 2019, Dr. Verstraete was working as a part-time Lecturer at the Theatre Studies Institute of the University of Amsterdam. Between 2012 and 2018, he was affiliated to various universities in Turkey. From 2010 until January 2012, he was a full-time tenured Lecturer at the Drama Department in Exeter. Before 2010, he taught at the Institute for Theatre Studies of the University of Amsterdam, as well as the Cultural Studies Department of the Radboud University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands).
His main research interests are in contemporary (music) theatre, socio-political, activist forms of performance and post-migration. He also works as a freelance theatre critic. In 2012, he received a Tübitak scholarship at Ankara University, a one-year Mercator-IPC Fellowship at Sabanci University and became an Honorary University Fellow to the University of Exeter. In 2013, he continued his research at the Migration Research Center of Istanbul Bilgi University with the support of Türkiye Burslari.
Verstraete’s first post-doc research project during his Mercator-IPC Fellowship was entitled ‘Turkish Post-Migrant Theatre in Transit: Transnational Pathways of Socio-Artistic Collaboration between Germany and Turkey’ in the thematic area of ‘Education’. During his Türkiye Burslari fellowship, he continued the postdoc research with a specific focus on music theatre and contemporary opera, under the title: “Post-Migration in Music Theatre: Listening at the Cultural Crossroads between Europe and Turkey”.
Currently, he is looking at the work of Turkish and Kurdish artists who collaborate with European ensembles or who work against censorship practices in Turkey to address socio-cultural issues like post-migration, exilic life and insurgency through theatre performances. His MSCA-Action, entitled "Exiled Lives on the Stage: Turkey’s Theatre Artists at the Crossroads of New Aesthetic Practices and Political Subjectivities" (acronym: ExiLives), gives him the opportunity to document the personal stories and artistic productions by exiled (theatre) artists from Turkey in Europe. The theatre arts are discussed for their utility in understanding new political subjectivities and aesthetic practices emerging from the exilic situation. The project runs a podcast, called Exiled Lives. For more information, please visit the project website at exiledlives.eu.
Pieter Verstraete holds a PhD degree in the Humanities from the Department of Theater Studies and the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis of the University of Amsterdam.
Supervisors: M.A. Bleeker, C.B. Balme, J. Lazardzig, G.K.H. Ley, B.P. van Heusden, M. Kiss, and A. Lagaay
Phone: 00491632240656
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Books by Pieter Verstraete
Distinguished as well as young, emerging scholars from disciplines such as philosophy, comparative literature, musicology and art theory discuss concrete case studies in which these questions arise. The essays share a commitment to interdisciplinary approaches and the close analysis of cultural objects, and refuse to take for granted the conventional methodologies that often guide research projects in their respective fields. The Inside Knowledge volume stages encounters between different ways of knowing, which contribute to an interdisciplinary understanding of the concept of knowledge and of epistemological questions in the humanities.
Chapters by Pieter Verstraete
With a strong sense of historical background, this book zooms in on current issues in relation to music theatre today. How do we expect cultural policy to categorize a hybrid ‘genre’ such as music theatre? Is the international (festival) circuit open enough to young and emerging artists? How can the artistic symbiosis music theatre calls for be dealt with in different institutional contexts: in education and training, in the media, in policy environments?"
Articles by Pieter Verstraete