Dr Paola Botham

Senior Lecturer in Drama

Email:
paola.botham@bcu.ac.uk

Dr Paola Botham (née Sotomayor) is a theatre academic who specialises in modern and contemporary drama. She was born in Chile, where she studied Journalism and Aesthetics at Universidad Católica, ranked among the top higher education institutions in Latin America. After moving to the UK, she completed an MA in British Theatre Studies and a PhD in Drama and Performance. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy with extensive teaching experience.

Paola’s research focuses on political theatre practices in Britain and internationally (particularly in the Southern Cone). Her publications include chapters on the feminist dystopian play for Twenty-First Century Anxieties (2022), on the contemporary history play for Twenty-First Century Drama (2016) and on tribunal theatre for Political Performances (2009), as well as numerous articles. As a former convenor of the Political Performances working group at the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), she co-edited the volume World Political Theatre and Performance: Theories, Histories, Practices (2020). In 2023 she became co-convenor of IFTR’s Interdisciplinary Performative Pedagogies working group.

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