#48 S:PAM Lecture | Margaret Hamilton -Networks, Influence & the Politics of Scenographic Discourses

Name: #48 S:PAM Lecture | Margaret Hamilton -Networks, Influence & the Politics of Scenographic Discourses
Start: 2026-01-20T14:00:00+01:00
End: 2026-01-20T16:30:00+01:00
Location: Rozier 44, 9000 Gent, België

Schedule

Tue Jan 20 2026 at 02:00 pm to 04:30 pm

UTC+01:00

Location

Rozier 44, 9000 Gent, België | Gent, OV

S:PAM lecture #48: Networks, Influence and the Politics of Scenographic Discourses: Using Digital Tools to Map Artistic “Signatures”
The lecture will take place in Library Lab Loveling, at the Faculty library of Arts and Philosophy (Rozier 44). Please register via https://event.ugent.be/registration/ArtisticSignatures
In this S:PAM lecture #48, Prof. Dr. Margaret Hamilton explores the question of how to account for artistic “signatures” attributed to stage directors that emerge from a dynamic network of artists interacting to create a work, and interconnected through professional relational ties to other artists and theatre work. She will demonstrate the use of digital tools to map the collaborations intrinsic to the creation of scenographic discourses, and as a method of measuring the transfer and transformation of design languages key to theatre production. In doing so, the seminar will consider the formation of a “repertoire” of tendencies in design and question the political logic intrinsic to aesthetic styles that manifest in productions with radically different performance agendas in the theatre medium. Participants will get the opportunity to share their own artistic or theoretical practices with each other, fostering a collective discussion on the mapping of artistic connections.
Margaret Hamilton is Associate Professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her current research is at the intersection of digital humanities and dramaturgical analysis and examines the relationship between artistic form and prospect of critique in the context of neoliberal capitalism. She is the author of Transfigured Stages: Major Practitioners and Theatre Aesthetics in Australia (2011), the first major study of postdramatic theatre in Australia. She is a member of the Management Committee of AusStage, the Australian National Performing Arts database (ausstage.edu.au), honoured by UNESCO for its significance as documentary heritage and recognised as one of the most significant innovations in the last 50 years by the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2021.
Credit: The Seagull, by Anton Chekhov, dir. by Benedict Andrews, Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, 2011. Photo: Heidrun Löhr.