Lecturer in Drama and Performance, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

Zoë Svendsen is a theatre director, dramaturg and translator.

She is Lecturer in Drama and Performance in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Zoe is also director of METIS, creating research-driven interdisciplinary performance-as-research projects exploring contemporary political subjects, including the Artsadmin Green Commission, WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE (Barbican Centre 2018), an installation imagining living under alternative economic conditions in the context of climate change; World Factory, exploring consumer capitalism through the lens of the global textile industry (UK tour; shortlisted for the Berlin Theatertreffen Stückemarkt 2016); 3rd Ring Out, an emergency-planning-style ‘rehearsal’ for climate crisis (TippingPoint Commission Award; UK tour). As dramaturg Zoë collaboratively rethinks classic texts for the contemporary stage, including: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Measure for Measure and The Changeling (Young Vic); Miss Julie (Aarhus Theatre, Denmark); Macbeth and Arden of Faversham (Royal Shakespeare Company); Edward II (National Theatre). Zoë is artistic associate at the New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich, where she is leading a programme exploring the representation of women in plays; and an honorary research fellow at Birkbeck’s Centre for Contemporary Theatre. In 2014-15 Zoë was artist-in-residence at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin; in 2016-17 was selected to participate in the Future Scenarios ‘networked residency’ of the Culture and Climate Change project, supported by the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, the Open University, and Sheffield University; and was artist-in-residence at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative in 2018