Manfredi de Bernard (KCL) - 2019-20 Students
manfredi.de_bernard@kcl.ac.uk

Complex Cultural Ecology: Connections Between Not-for-Profit, Commercial and Fringe Theatres in the UK

Informed by complexity theory and cultural ecology framework, this project focuses on the interdependent relationship among not-for-profit, commercial and fringe organisations. Specifically, the chosen case study is the flow of workers among the latter in the context of the UK theatre sector. The methodology is a mixed-method network analysis and relies on a large dataset web scraped from Mandy, an online platform that holds theatre professionals’ resumes. Such methodology allows the investigation of the collective influence cast on individual workers’ careers and the different access patterns to the three spheres. The use of CV also enables addressing the time dimension, one perspective crucially missing in the ecological framework. Moreover, to mitigate the latter’s insensitivity to power relations, the theatre work network is also investigated under an intersectional inequality perspective to highlight eventual exclusionary patterns.

Primary supervisor: Dr Roberta Comunian, KCL
Secondary supervisor: Dr Elsa Arcaute, UCL