Chris Collins

Contact

• workRoom A43 Trent Building
  University Park
  Nottingham
  NG7 2RD
  UK
• work0115 748 6363
• fax0115 951 5924
• Christopher.Collins@nottingham.ac.uk

Biography

Qualifications

Ph.D (Trinity College Dublin)

Expertise Summary

I am the Head of Drama and Creative Writing in the School of English.

I teach drama, theatre, and performance (text, history, theory and practice) across all three undergraduate year groups. As you'll see from my research expertise below, I have particular expertise in twentieth-and-twenty-first-century Irish theatre and performance. I am the convener of a fantastic final year undergraduate module, "Modern Irish Drama and Literature".

Research Expertise

My research expertise and experience is in the intersections between drama, theatre, performance and the Health Humanities. I have published extensively on twentieth-and-twenty-first-century Irish theatre and performance, with a specific focus on the work of mental health in the work of J.M. Synge. I also use creative practice as a collaborative and communicative tool to create new knowledge and understanding about health care practice. You can follow updates on my current research on Twitter here

Professional Affiliations; Outreach and Public Engagement

I am a member of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). From 2016 to 2020 I served as the Secretary-General (Communications) for IFTR, and sat on the Executive Committee from 2016-2021. I am also a member of the Irish Society for Theatre Research, and sat on the Executive Committee from 2014-2019.

From 2022-2025, I am a member of the AHRC's Peer-Review College.

I have worked as a community-based workshop facilitator, leading workshops in category 'A' prisons, and with children and young adults with chronic illnesses and handicaps. I am currently the Principal Investigator on an internally funded AHRC Impact Accelerator award at the University of Nottingham, "Performing Cerebral Palsy: Healthcare, Ageing and Access".

I have given many public workshops/lectures and post-show discussions on twentieth-and-twenty-first-century British and Irish playwrights. I've also been invited to speak about Synge's work at Ireland's National Theatre (the Abbey Theatre) on more than one occasion, as well as at the Embassy of Ireland in Ankara, Turkey. I'd be very happy to give more!

Teaching Summary

I teach across all three undergraduate years including the core first-year module, Drama, Theatre and Performance. For final-year undergraduates I teach a module called Modern Irish Drama and… read more

Research Summary

I am currently dividing my time between four research projects, all of which I am very excited about.

The first is a new book called J.M. Synge's Emotions: Irish Modernism and Mental Health. The purpose of this book is to examine the history of negative emotions in the production and reception of J.M. Synge's Irish modernism. The book explains how unmanageable negative emotions in Synge's works contributed to a burgeoning culture of self-help and therapy that we now take for granted in our contemporary cultures of emotional tolerance and understanding. My latest research on this topic, an essay called "Synge on Vagrancy: Labour, Workhouses and the Feeble-Minded" was published in Irish Studies Review in November 2020. The book is under contract with Oxford University Press and will be published in 2026.

The second project is a collection of essays entitled Synge and Transnational Modernisms. This collection considers how Synge's Irish modernism contributed to the development of global modernisms. The collection will offer interdisciplinary perspectives on how Synge's work influenced different writers, theatre-makers and artists across the globe. With a sustained emphasis on theories of transnationalism throughout, the collection places an emphasis on how Synge's modernism challenges institutionalised knowledge about centres, borders, and multiculturalism. The collection is currently under contract with Liverpool University Press and will be published in 2026.

The third project considers how nostalgia is produced and to what effect in contemporary performance. My most recent work on this project has been published in New Theatre Quarterly in 2019 and in The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre in 2023.

The fourth project is called "Performing Cerebral Palsy: Healthcare, Ageing and Access". This multidisciplinary project investigates the potential of the creative arts to communicate new knowledge and understanding on ageing and experiences of healthcare in people with cerebral palsy.

Recent Publications

• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2023. "Modernist Nostalgia in Contemporary Irish Dance". In: ADRIAN CURTIN, NICHOLAS JOHNSON, NAOMI PAXTON AND CLAIRE WARDEN, ed., The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre Edinburgh University Press. 45-61
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2021. The Playboy of the Western World: Commentary and notes Methuen Student Edition. Methuen.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2020. "Synge on vagrancy: labour, workhouses and the feeble-minded" Irish Studies Review. 28(4),
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2019. Performing the Rural in Contemporary Irish Theatre New Theatre Quarterly. 35(4),

• View all publications

I am very interested in hearing from prospective PhD students interested in modern and contemporary Irish and British theatre and performance.

I teach across all three undergraduate years including the core first-year module, Drama, Theatre and Performance. For final-year undergraduates I teach a module called Modern Irish Drama and Literature, which is directly informed by my own research.

Past Research

My past research has focused on modern and contemporary Irish theatre and performance, with a particular focus on the works of J.M. Synge. My first monograph, Theatre and Residual Culture: J.M. Synge and Pre-Christian Ireland was published by Palgrave in 2016, and it was reviewed as 'the most important volume on Synge to be published in decades'. I have also published a guide to arguably Synge's most controversial play, The Playboy of the Western World (Routledge, 2016) as well as writing the introduction to the Methuen Student Edition of The Playboy of the Western World (Methuen, 2021). My reserarch on contemporary Irish theatre includes articles in New Theatre Quarterly, The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance (Palgrave 2018) and a collection of essays that I co-edited entitled Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination (Palgrave 2014).

• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2023. "Modernist Nostalgia in Contemporary Irish Dance". In: ADRIAN CURTIN, NICHOLAS JOHNSON, NAOMI PAXTON AND CLAIRE WARDEN, ed., The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre Edinburgh University Press. 45-61
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2021. The Playboy of the Western World: Commentary and notes Methuen Student Edition. Methuen.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2020. "Synge on vagrancy: labour, workhouses and the feeble-minded" Irish Studies Review. 28(4),
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2019. Performing the Rural in Contemporary Irish Theatre New Theatre Quarterly. 35(4),
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2018. "Other Theatres". In: EAMONN JORDAN and ERIC WEITZ, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance Palgrave Macmillan.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2016. Theatre and Residual Culture: J.M. Synge and Pre-Christian Ireland Palgrave Macmillan.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2016. J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World Routledge.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2015. 'This World of Inarticualte Power': J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea and Magical Realism. In: JOSÉ LANTERS and JOAN FITZPATRICK DEAN, eds., Beyond Realism: Experimental and Unconventional Irish Drama Since the Revival Rodopi.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2015. W.B. Yeats; The Abbey Theatre; The Gate Theatre; The Gaiety Theatre; Dion Boucicault; Francis Fay; Olwen Fouéré; Francis Gentleman; Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh; George Roberts. In: SIMON WILLIAMS, ed., The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Stage Actors and Acting
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS and MARY P. CAULFIELD, eds., 2014. Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination Palgrave Macmillan.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2014. Forgetting Follow. In: CHRISTOPHER COLLINS and MARY P. CAULFIELD, eds., Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination Palgrave Macmillan.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS and MARY P. CAULFIELD, 2014. Introduction: The Rest is History. In: CHRISTOPHER COLLINS and MARY P. CAULFIELD, eds., Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination Palgrave Macmillan.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2014. Synge, Riders to the Sea and the Discontents of Historical Time Irish Theatre International. 3(1),
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2014. Synge and 'Protestant Comedy'. In: ERIC WEITZ, ed., For the Sake of Sanity: Doing Things with Humour in Irish Performance Carysfort Press.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2012. J.M. Synge, W.B. Yeats and The Changeling of the Western World. In: RHONA TRENCH, ed., Staging Thought: Essays on Irish Theatre, Scholarship and Practice Peter Lang.
• CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2011. Synge Scholarship: Nothing to do with Nationalism? Theatre Research International. 36(3),