Stefanie Hampel M.A.

As a theatre scholar, I study personnel recruitment and -formation in theatre institutions in German-speaking countries in the first half of the 20th century, with particular attention on the Weimar republic and the Nazi era. In doing so, I focus on processes of centralisation and institutionalisation.

The recruitment and formation of actors is carried out along a constantly shifting and changeable dividing line, which is used to select those who are “talented” and weed out those who are “untalented”. In historical shifts, the concept of “talent” is under constant change and inflection, thus serving different kinds of human differentiation, such as age, gender, or race. Which organisations and institutions are formed in the course of this selection process? And how did the acting profession become professionalized?

I would like to explore these and other questions in my part of the D04 “Schauspielen als Beruf” sub-project together with Hanna Voss, Friedemann Kreuder and Annika Will, as well as in my doctoral thesis. 

I have been a research assistant at the CRC 1482 since 2023 and initially wrote my master’s thesis as part of the sub-project A05 “Staging Differences”. My academic background includes studies in theatre studies, musicology (Johannes Gutenberg-University), and mathematical economics (Bielefeld University).

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich