Sam Rees (QMUL) - 2025-26 Students
s.rees@qmul.ac.uk

Building London's Theatres: Performance and Political Economy 2010-2026

This project brings performance studies, urban studies, and political economy into dialogue in order to rethink the role of theatre in the financialised city. Through a series of case studies of theatres built in London since 2010, I argue that these institutions operate not simply as cultural venues but as mediating infrastructures within regimes of hyperfinancialisation. In doing so, they actively perform both their monetary and commodity forms, producing and circulating multiple, uneven, and sometimes contradictory kinds of value for developers, planners, local stakeholders, and audiences.

Principal supervisor: Prof. Michael McKinnie