Dr. Stefanie Husel

I am a research associate at the FTMK (Institute for Film, Theater, Media, and Cultural Studies) at JGU Mainz and lead SFB Subproject D06 on the topic “Theater in Competition: Diversity as a Criterion for Cultural Funding”.

In the SFB

As part of subproject D06, I am collaborating with Sophie Blomen to investigate how human differentiation (e.g., by gender, age, sexual orientation, or ethnicity) and the assessment of artistic quality interact in the context of competition for funding. Together with Tobias Boll and Sabina Fazli, I lead the KF 2 “Personnel Formats.”

Biography & Research Interests

In my research, I combine aesthetic and sociological perspectives and examine—mostly from a participatory point of view—the practice of contemporary theater.

I have been moving between different disciplines, as well as between theory and practice, since my student days, during which I worked as a theater technician; later, I organized theater festivals as a freelancer before arriving at the University of Mainz following my interdisciplinary PhD (supervised by Hans-Thies Lehmann, Theater Studies, and Stefan Hirschauer, Sociology).

I am particularly interested in the practices of theater performances, games and play, and their infrastructures, as well as in the evaluation and categorization of people and their practices as “artistically valuable.” In this context, I also place particular importance on looking behind our ‘own’ scenes—the working methods of theater studies are therefore a central theme in my university teaching.