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. As a Hulme Junior Research Fellow, I am currently working on a project which charts a history of The Drill Hall arts venue in London through the queer-feminist performances which took place there from the 1980s to the 2010s.
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. Prior to my doctoral project, I was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Study Abroad Studentship, to pursue my MA education at Stockholm University, Sweden.
I am currently working on a monograph emerging out of my PhD thesis. I am published in Contemporary Theatre Review (2024), Theatre Research International (2020), and in two forthcoming edited collections, The Routledge Companion to Drag and The Palgrave Handbook of Global Feminism, Theatre, and Performance.
I am published under the name Emma Welton, but my preferred name is Em.
I have previously taught for Queen Mary 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.
I am on the Management Committee of the queer campaign group Friends of the Joiners Arms. I perform as drag kings Oliver Cumwell and General Waste. I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
