I arrived at Brasenose in 2025, after completing my PhD in Drama from Queen Mary University of London. Prior to my PhD, I lived in Sweden for four years. There, I completed my MA in Theatre Studies at Stockholm University thanks to a Leverhulme Trust Study Abroad Studentship. My BA was in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick, and prior to that, I attended state comprehensive schools in the Fens, eastern England.

As a Hulme Junior Research Fellow, I am currently working on a project which charts a history of The Drill Hall Arts Centre in London through the queer-feminist performances which took place there from the 1980s to the 2010s.

I sit on the Management Committee of the Friends of the Joiners Arms Campaign. I perform as drag kings Oliver Cumwell and General Waste.

I have previously taught for Queen Mary University of London, Goldsmiths University of London, Rose Bruford College, London Contemporary Dance School, Wimbledon College of Arts, and Stockholm University. I have led seminars, given lectures, and facilitated practice and workshops on a number of key areas in theatre and performance studies, including performance analysis, theatre history, queer, feminist, and critical race theory, theatre reviewing, drag and puppetry practices. I have supervised undergraduate dissertations on a wide range of topics, including endurance art, gender and casting practices, masculinity and performance in contemporary emo music, and queer women’s representation in animated performance.

My research interests are in Theatre and Performance Studies. My research explores histories, aesthetics, and dramaturgies of queer-feminist performance, with a particular focus on drag, cabaret, live art, and theatrical adaptation. I am always happy to chat to students who are researching any of these aspects of theatre and performance, in particular.

In 2025, I was awarded my PhD in Drama from Queen Mary University of London. My doctoral studies were funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership/AHRC, and my project was supervised by Professors Jen Harvie and Stephen Farrier. My thesis retheorised camp as a queer-feminist performative response to – and critique of – contemporary socioeconomic austerity’s imposed, compulsory constraint.

I am currently working on a monograph emerging out of my PhD thesis. Alongside Kfir Lapid and Paul Edwards, I am a co-convener of the Bodies and Performance Working Group as part of the Theatre and Performance Research Association.

I am published under the name Emma Welton, but my preferred name is Em.