Dr Katie Beswick
Title
Programme Director Acting and Performance
College
University of the Arts London
Email address
Tags
Researcher Research

Biography
Katie Beswick is a writer and academic. She joined University of the Arts London as Programme Director Acting and Performance at Wimbledon College of Arts in January 2022. Prior to this she worked as a Senior Lecturer in the Drama Department at the University of Exeter from 2015-2022, and has also worked at Queen Mary University of London and at the University of Leeds.Katie's academic writing is embedded in concerns of class and politics, with numerous publications on a diverse range of subjects including housing, hip hop, performer training and street performance forms. She is interested in the ways arts practices both shape and respond to social, economic and political realities, and with the ways working-class people and communities make and receive art (particularly theatre and performance). She works closely with a number of artists to document and respond to their practice — recently this has included work with the Women Working Class artist collective, with Kelly Green and with the beatbox theatre practitioner Conrad Murray. She also writes arts journalism, and is a regular contributor to the music magazine Loud and Quiet.
Born and raised in South London, Katie trained as performer, working as an actor, community theatre practitioner and a facilitator of applied theatre before undertaking a PhD that explored the representation of social housing in British theatre practices. She has also worked a social housing officer, education mentor and as a waitress, barmaid, shop assistant and finance administrator.
She is currently working on a monograph, 'SIags on Stage' (Routledge 2023), which explores representations of women's interventions into class, sex and desire in art and performance in the UK from the 1970s to the present day, melding performance analysis, personal reflections and data from ethnographic research to build a picture of the way the word 'slag' works through art and culture.
External Links
Research Outputs
Article
- Beswick K. :3LON (2022)
- Beswick K. They Hate Change: born in Tampa, raised on every UK sub-genre imaginable (2021)
- Beswick K. Greentea Peng: unity in trip-hop (2021)
- Beswick K. Feeling good: the ecstatic return of Japanese Breakfast (2021)
- Beswick K. Junglepussy: “We’re all just waiting on the world to change” (2021)
- Beswick K. Feeling Working Class: Affective Class Identification and its Implications for Overcoming Inequality (2021)
- Beswick K. The Performative Violence of the Wedding Dress: Teaching Queer Theory through Object Orientation (2021)
- Beswick K. Tkay Maidza: stay positive (2020)
- Beswick K. Slaggy Mums: Class, Single Motherhood and Performing Endurance (2020)
- Beswick K. Capitalist Realism: Glimmers, Working-Class Authenticity and Andrea Dunbar in the 21st Century (2020)
- Beswick K. Here comes Dai Burger – a fabulous antidote to misery (2020)
- Beswick K. Housing, Performance and Activism: Thinking with Performance in Times of Crisis. Studies in Theatre and Performance (2020)
- Beswick K. JPEGMAFIA – The possibilities are infinite (2019)
- Beswick K. Crumb – Delicate indie-jazz from a band contemplating luck (2019)
- Beswick K. The horizontal charm of Otha, the Norwegian artist making club music for the introverted (2019)
- Beswick K. Sammus – A PhD student and rapper moves beyond her sad songs (2018)
- Beswick K. Jackie Cohen – surprising music from LA’s most surprised musician (2018)
- Beswick K. Tirzah: fresh parenthood, lifelong kinship and a new, old-fashioned romance record (2018)
- Beswick K. Jenny Wilson still wants you to dance to her new album about her own rape (2018)
- Beswick K. Playing to Type: Industry and Invisible Training in the National Youth Theatre’s ‘Playing Up 2’ (2018)
- Beswick K. SHIRT is the “Duchampian” rapper recycling art history to make a new statement (2018)
- Beswick K. From Colombia to Canada, everything Lido Pimienta does ends up being a political statement (2017)
- Beswick K. New York made Wiki – now he wants a street named after him (2017)
- Beswick K. Eyedress – Laconic indie hip-hop from Manila, about Manila and for Manila (2017)
- Beswick K. LICE – the Bristol band capturing that end-of-uni, making-it-up-as-you-go-along feeling (2017)
- Beswick K. In Iceland with Reykjavíkurdætur – the country’s first female hip-hop band who are feminists… because all groups should be (2017)
- Beswick K. Kadhja Bonet – the Los Angeles artist conjuring that 1940s Disney feeling (2017)
- Beswick K. Joey Purp is the vegan rapper from Chicago setting his sights on a Lil Wayne collaboration (2016)
- Beswick K. Build A Fortress (2016)
- Beswick K, Hawkins H, Kohmaier J. The road to Epidaurus is like the road to creation: tapping the urban archive (2016)
- Beswick K. Ten in a Bed: Literacy, Intermediality and the Potentials of Low-Tech (2016)
- Beswick K. A Trialectical Cusp: between the real and the represented (2016)
- Beswick K. High Rise eState of Mind: Love and honesty in the midst of London’s neoliberal housing crisis
- Beswick K, Johnson J. Sounds of The City: Dramaturgy, Space, Identity
- Beswick K. Staging Grenfell: The Ethics of Representing Housing Crises in London
Book
- Beswick K, Murray C. Beats and Elements: A Hip Hop Theatre Trilogy (2022)
- Beswick K, Murray C. Making Hip Hop Theatre: Beatbox and Elements (2022)
- Beswick K. Wasted: Student Edition (2020)
- Beswick K. Social Housing in Performance: The English Council Estate on and Off Stage (2019)
Book Section
- Beswick K. Rita, Sue and Bob Too (2021)
- Beswick K. Class, Race and Marginality: Informal Street Performances in the City (2021)
- Beswick K. Jordan McKenzie: Three Works (2020)
- Beswick K. Live Art and the Body (2017)
- Beswick K. The Council Estate as Hood: SPID Theatre Company and Grass-roots Arts Practice as Cultural Politics (2016)
Conference, Symposium or Workshop item
- Beswick K. Being Slaggy/Representing Slaggyness: Sex, Class and Embodiment in Britain (2021)
- Beswick K. Sex, Lies and Difficult Truth in Cash Carraway’s Skint Estate (2021)
- Beswick K. Slags on Stage: The Toxic Working-Class Female in Contemporary Theatre and Performance (2019)
- Beswick K. Is this love? Performance on the Streets of New York (2017)
- Beswick K. Litefeet and the Democratising Potential of Social Media Platforms (2017)
Teaching
Current research students
- James Woodhams, Site Specific Theatre for Children in Areas of Rural Disadvantage (Lead supervisor)
Past research students
- Elaine Faul, Theatre Alibi and Children’s Theatre (Joint supervisor)
- Thomas Nicholas, Representations of Regional English Cities (Joint supervisor)