Harriet Curtis

Harriet Curtis is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at De Montfort University, affiliated with the School of Humanities and Performing Arts within the Faculty of Arts, Design and Humanities. She is currently the Institute Head of Research Students for Arts, Design, and Performance and serves as an editor for the peer-reviewed journal Studies in Theatre and Performance. She has previously taught at King's College London, Birkbeck, and Queen Mary University of London.

• BA (Joint Hons) Art History and English Studies, University of Nottingham (2008)
• MA in Art History: Modern Art, Criticism and Display, University of Nottingham (2009)
• PhD in Drama, Queen Mary University of London (2014)
• Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice in Higher Education, King's College London (2016)
• CAHE Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills, Capital City Training College, London (2022)

Harriet Curtis’s research focuses on contemporary performance, live art, and visual culture, with a strong emphasis on feminist, queer, and activist art practices. Her work critically examines performance documentation, archives, and the body in performance, often through a lens of vulnerability, resistance, and political action. She is particularly interested in how mess, lingering, and affect operate as methodologies in performance. Her 2024 monograph Mess and Contemporary Performance: Complexity, Containment, and Collapse (Routledge) is a major contribution to the field, theorizing mess as both aesthetic and political.

The 15 most recent publications and presentations reflect a consistent engagement with themes of abjection, documentation, feminist and queer reenactment, and the politics of disgust and vulnerability in performance. Her work spans archival research, critical theory, and practice-based inquiry, often analyzing key figures such as Paul McCarthy, Carolee Schneemann, and Kira O’Reilly. She frequently contributes to discussions on performance historiography, audience affect, and the ethics of documentation.

Scientific Awards and Honors:

• Nominated for Interdisciplinary Research Award, DMU (2024)
• Nominated for Student Enrichment Award, DMU (2024)
• Nominated for Student Choice Teaching Award, DMU (2023)
• Nominated for Vice Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award, DMU (2019, 2020)
• Nominated for TaPRA Editing Prize for Kira O’Reilly: Untitled (Bodies) (2018)

Harriet Curtis actively supervises PhD students working on feminist, queer, and interdisciplinary live art practices, including projects on postpartum bodies, liminality, displacement, and decolonial performance. She has contributed to externally funded initiatives and led internally funded projects such as Creatively Innovating the Archive. She is a member of several professional associations including TaPRA, IFTR, and PSi, and has served on external review panels for academic programs. She also chairs and examines PhD theses, both internally and externally, and has been recognized for her contributions to research leadership through DMU’s Future Research Leaders programme.

She leads and teaches modules in performance studies, critical theory, and interdisciplinary performance-making at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her involvement in the University and College Union (UCU) and her role as branch Research Representative reflect her commitment to academic labor and institutional advocacy.