Dr KE Röttger (b. 1958) has been appointed professor of Theatre Studies in the Faculty of Humanities at the Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA).

Theatre Studies provides students with more than just training to work in theatre-related professions, such as playwriting. Kati Röttger believes that Theatre Studies is also a discipline where the structures which shape our perception of the world come to the fore: plot structures, a certain order of the visible, representation, bodily techniques, and so forth. Röttger herself is also broadly-oriented. Her current research focuses on image and media critique in modern theatre. Questions about the function and aesthetic of the theatre in the context of globalisation and changing identity (nation versus migration) play a particularly important role in her work. The first results of this study will be published this year in a collection of essays on which she has collaborated with a German colleague: Theater und Bild. Inszenierungen des Sehens (Theatre and Image: Productions of the Visible). Additionally, Röttger sees it as her special task as Theatre Studies professor in Amsterdam to connect these current issues to historical research on Dutch theatre in a European context. This will be a continuation of her previous research, in which she primarily focused on the development of German national theatre in the eighteenth century. In regards to study programs at the UvA, her energy will be especially concentrated on the creation of a Master’s in Intercultural Performance Studies.

Röttger has been assistant professor in the research group in Theatre Studies at the UvA since 2005. She has formerly worked at the Humboldt Universität Berlin, the Ludwig Maximilians Universität Munich, and the Institute for Theaterwissenschaft at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz. In 2004 she obtained her Habilitation (a requirement in Germany to become a professor) with a thesis entitled Theater als Medium des Sehens. Bildpraxis und Politik des Sehens um 1800 und Heute (Theatre as Medium of the Visible. Image Praxis and Politics of the Visible in 1800 and Today). Röttger obtained her PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin in the subject of Columbian theatre. There she studied Theatre Studies, German literature, and Philosophy.