Dr. Hanna Voss

I am a research assistant at the Institute for Film, Theatre, Media and Cultural Studies, Department of Theatre Studies, at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. I lead the sub-project D04 „Acting as a Profession. Historical Conjunctures of Human Differentiation in Actor Training, Artist Marketing and Theatres in the 20th Century“ (together with Friedemann Kreuder). In my sub-study, I am investigating the ‚production‘ of actors in the GDR.

CV

I studied Theatre Studies and General and Comparative Literature as well as simultaneously Economics in Mainz. As a project assistant, I was previously involved in the DFG Research Group „Un/Doing Differences“, from which the SFB „Human Differentiation“ emerged among other things. In 2025, I obtained my PhD for a thesis on theatre as institution at the intersection of theatre studies and sociology. Since 2021, I have been part of the coordination collective of the „Institutional Change“ working group of the German Society for Theater Studies (Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft, gtw).

Research

My research focuses on theatre studies as a social science discipline examining social differentiation, theatre and ethnicity, acting training and artist marketing in the 20th and 21st centuries, performance analysis and ethnography as methods in theatre studies as well as institutional and organizational theory. My next book „Theater als Institution. Zur Auswahl und Vermittlung von Schauspielenden – Ethno- und Historiografie eines Feldes“ is in preparation (Bielefeld: transcript, 2027).

Photo: Robert Schittko