The CBTBarcelona research group has received official recognition from the Catalan research agency AGAUR for the 2014-2016 (2014 SGR 49) and 2017-2021 (2017 SGR 40) periods.
The group formed part of the Research Network “Anglophone Literatures in the Twenty-First Century: Narrative and Performative Spaces (LEAP21)” (RED2018-102678-T, 2020-2021) and currently forms part of the Research Network “Anglophone Literatures in the Twenty-First Century: Transnational Spaces (LEAP21+)” (RED2022-134586-T, 2023-2025), with Isabel Carrera Suárez (University of Oviedo) as Principal Investigator in both cases.
Starting in 2020, the group is in partnership with Fundació Teatre Lliure (Barcelona) and the MA programme Construction and Representation of Cultural Identities (University of Barcelona) to organize the annual Awards to Best BA and MA dissertations on contemporary theatre studies, as well as generally promote the teaching of and research into contemporary theatre. The seminar “A peu d’escenari”, which runs from 18 October 2022 to 1 June 2023 at Teatre Lliure and the University of Barcelona, forms part of this ongoing collaboration.
“Gender, Affect and Care in Twenty-First Century British Theatre”
Funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2021-126448NA-I00), this three-year research project – the sixth one conducted by the group – has Clara Escoda as Principal Investigator and Mireia Aragay, Maria Elena Capitani, Alba Knijff, Elisabeth Massana, Albert Méndez, Martin Middeke, José Ramón Prado, Paola Prieto, Verónica Rodríguez, María Isabel Seguro, Aleks Sierz, Marta Tirado, Ariane de Waal and Clare Wallace as team members. Concentrating on an understanding of gender that encompasses constructions of masculinity, work authored by cis- and transgender, LGTBI, queer and non-conforming playwrights, as well as queer dramaturgies, the project sets out to examine how contemporary British theatre and performance engage with the intersections between gender and neoliberalism, class, race, health and body, and to analyze such intersections from the perspective of affect studies and the ethics of care.
“British Theatre in the Twenty-First Century: Crisis, Affect, Community”
From January 2017 to June 2021, the team worked on this four-year research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) and the EU European Regional Development Fund (FFI2016-75443), with Mireia Aragay as Principal Investigator. The project probed how contemporary dramaturgies of affect engage with a complex historical moment of intersecting crises – financial, political, environmental, humanitarian – and re-imagined communities.
“Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship”
Funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2012-31842-P), this three-year research project had Mireia Aragay as Principal Investigator and Cristina Delgado-García, Clara Escoda, Martin Middeke, Enric Monforte, José Ramón Prado, Verónica Rodríguez, María Isabel Seguro, Aleks Sierz and Marta Tirado as team members.
“Representations of the Precarious in Contemporary British Theatre”
This was a one-year (2014) research project funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD; Projekt-ID 57049392). It had Martin Middeke and Mireia Aragay as Principal Investigators, and Christian Attinger, Bettina Auerswald, Elzbieta Baraniecka, Cristina Delgado-García, Clara Escoda, Eva Gil, Christoph Henke, David Kerler, Enric Monforte, José Ramón Prado, Martin Riedelsheimer, Verónica Rodríguez and Adina Sorian, from the Universities of Augsburg, Barcelona, Jaume I (Castelló de la Plana, Spain), Manchester Metropolitan and Seville, as team members.
“The representation of politics and the politics of representation in post-1990 British drama and theatre”
Funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2009-07598), this was the second three-year project conducted by the group. Mireia Aragay was Principal Investigator and Clara Escoda, Hildegard Klein, Enric Monforte, Verónica Rodríguez, María Isabel Seguro and Pilar Zozaya were on the team. The collection of essays Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre, resulting from this project, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014.
“Contemporary English Theatre since 1995”
The first three-year project conducted by the group was financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education (BFF2002-00257) and had Pilar Zozaya as Principal Investigator and Mireia Aragay, Hildegard Klein and Enric Monforte as team members. The project focused mainly on ‘in-yer-face’ theatre produced in London from the mid-1990s onwards and led to the publication of British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
