Emma Cole

I am a classicist and a theatre and performance studies scholar, and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society. My area of expertise lies in the performance of Greek tragedy in contemporary theatre, and I am particularly interested in experimental, immersive, and postdramatic adaptations of tragic texts. My most recent research was supported through the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, via a UKRI Innovation Fellowship titled Punchdrunk on the Classics. The research project built upon my prior work as academic consultant on Punchdrunk’s Kabeiroi (2017) and involved me going on secondment to Punchdrunk in a knowledge-exchange arrangement during which I worked as dramaturg on their production The Burnt City (2022-23). My monograph Punchdrunk on the Classics: Experiencing Immersion in The Burnt City and Beyond documented the intersection between immersion and ancient literature within the development and audience experience of the production, and was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2023. My collaboration with Punchdrunk on The Burnt City was profiled in the New York Times here.

Other current research projects include an edited collection titled Experiencing Immersion in Antiquity and Modernity: From Narrative to Virtual Reality (Bloomsbury), a student edition of Euripides' Women of Troy for Methuen Drama, an invited chapter on dance, immersivity, and translation in Punchdrunk's The Burnt City and, together with Professor Chris Hay (Flinders University) a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on the theatre director Simon Stone.

My previous publications include the monograph Postdramatic Tragedies through the Classical Presences series at Oxford University Press (2019), and the co-edited collection Adapting Translation for the Stage (with Geraldine Brodie, for Routledge's Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies series, shortlisted for the 2019 TaPRA prize for editing). I have also published articles and chapters on Punchdrunk, Sarah Kane, Martin Crimp, and Katie Mitchell. My pieces for a general audience have appeared in popular publications including The Theatre Times, The Conversation, and Exeunt Magazine. Dictionary and encyclopedia entries include the 'drama, reception of' entry for the Oxford Classical Dictionary, and the 'Ancient Greek Drama in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century' in the Methuen Drama Encyclopedia of Modern Theatre (2024).

I joined the University of Queensland in 2023. Prior to this, I worked at the University of Bristol from 2015-2023. Alongside academia, I work as a dramaturg and academic consultant on new writing and classical adaptation projects, and welcome contact from potential collaborators.