Dr Margherita Laera

Margherita joined Kent in 2012 and is now Director of Research and Innovation for the School of Arts. Her research interests lie at the intersections of drama, migration studies and modern languages, exploring the relation between theatre, cultures and ideology. She has published on contemporary theatre in Europe, especially in Italy; adaptation and translation for the stage; ‘classical’ Greek tragedy and its modern appropriations; performances by Black and Global Majority Italian playwrights and theatre-makers.

Margherita is the founder of Performing International Plays (PIP). PIP is a provider of educational resources, teacher CPDs and enrichment workshops for secondary schools exploring the educational potential of contemporary theatre (in) translation, in partnership with Foreign Affairs theatre company.

Margherita has recently completed a monograph entitled Playwriting in Europe: Mapping Systems and Practices with Fabulamundi (Routledge, 2022), which was also published in Italian. In 2018, she was awarded the Theatre and Performance Research Association’s Early Career Research Prize and the University of Kent’s Starting Research Prize 2018 for her body of work on theatre translation.

Margherita is the author of Theatre & Translation (Bloomsbury, 2019) and Reaching Athens: Community, Democracy and Other Mythologies in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy (Peter Lang, 2013) and editor of Theatre and Adaptation: Return, Rewrite, Repeat (Bloomsbury, 2014). Margherita also co-wrote and edited a tourist guide to London theatres entitled London: Brexit Stage Left (Cue Press, 2019) with Bojana Janković.

Margherita has contributed chapters on Italian theatre to edited volumes and authored journal articles for Contemporary Theatre Review, Modern Drama, Performance Research, TheatreForum and Critical Stages. She served as an editor for Theatre Research International, Theatre Journal and Theatre Topics from 2018 to 2022.

Margherita is also a practising theatre translator from and into Italian and English. She is currently editing the Methuen Drama Anthology of Contemporary Italian Plays (2025). Margherita is the Co-Director, with Prof. Paul Allain, of the European Theatre Research Network.

Before joining the University of Kent in 2012, Margherita taught at several UK institutions, including Queen Mary, University of London; Kingston University London; and Middlesex

University between 2008 and 2012. She studied Classics, Comparative Literature and Theatre Studies in Milan, Paris and London.

• Translation and Adaptation for the Stage
• Multilingual & Multicultural Theatre
• Contemporary Theatre, Performance and Playwriting in Europe
• Appropriations of Greek tragedy in Contemporary Theatre
• Theatre, Ideology and Identity

Margherita’s main research interests lie at the intersection of theatre, migration studies, and modern foreign languages. Her publications have focused on the politics of contemporary theatre practice in Italy, Britain and continental Europe, with an emphasis on modern and contemporary experimental performance and playwriting. She is interested in the way theatre and performance produce, disseminate or resist ideological discourses and beliefs around community, identity and otherness.

Margherita’s main research interests lie at the intersection of theatre, migration studies, and modern foreign languages. Her publications have focused on the politics of contemporary theatre practice in Italy, Britain and continental Europe, with an emphasis on modern and contemporary experimental performance and playwriting. She is interested in the way theatre and performance produce, disseminate or resist ideological discourses and beliefs around community, identity and otherness.

Before joining Kent, Margherita taught on a variety of Drama modules at Queen Mary, University of London. At Middlesex University, she taught core modules in the BA Translation Studies.

At Kent, Margherita has convened a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules, including: Theatre & Audiences; Sex, Gender and Performance; Theatre & Adaptation and Making Performance 2; MA Dissertation and others.

Margherita has supervised 4 PhD students through to completion. She is currently supervising several PGRs on projects including: adapting the classics for autistic audiences; staging theatre with young people for adults; using Greek tragedy to explore youth masculinity in secondary schools; a comparison between theatre translation practices in Britain and France; and inclusive approaches to drama facilitation.

Completed projects include: translating Minna Canth’s plays from Finnish to English; European directorial practices for canonical work; Sufi cultural influences on Grotowski’s work; and dramaturgical practices by Song of the Goat Theatre.

Margherita welcomes postgraduate enquiries for supervision in any of her areas of interest.