Editorial

Editorial Introduction: Exile and (Neo)Nationalism

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/ejtp.7.1.42827

Keywords:

exile, neonationalism, theatre studies, performance studies, editorial

Abstract

In today’s political landscape, few tensions feel more urgent than the one between migration and nationalism. On one side are the human stories of displacement: individuals forced to leave behind homes, identities, and nations. On the other are the entrenched structures of power—borders, laws, ideologies—that seek to contain, deny, or erase these stories. This special issue of the European Journal of Theatre and Performance (EJTP) takes this conflict as its point of departure, asking: How are migrants, exiles, and stateless individuals being represented, governed, and resisted today? And what role can theatre and performance play in responding to this global crisis?

Author Biographies

Pieter Verstraete, University of Groningen

Pieter Verstraete is a tenured Senior Lecturer in Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen. He is Editor in Chief of the European Journal of Theatre and Performance, an active member of the Executive Committee of EASTAP, and Chair of the MCAA Benelux Chapter. He co-edited the 4th special issue on ‘Activism and Spectatorship’ of EJTP with Agata Łuksza (2022) and the 7th issue, no. 2 on 'Exile and (Neo-)Nationalism' with Yana Meerzon (2025). He is also co-editor of books: Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities (CSP 2009), Berberian: Pioneer of Contemporary Vocality (Ashgate/Routledge 2014), and Theatre, Performance and Commemoration: Staging Crisis, Memory and Nationhood (Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama 2023). He is currently co-editing a volume, Imagining an Alternative Turkey: Mobilizing Resistance, Globalizing Publics (contracted with Palgrave).

Yana Meerzon, University of Ottawa

Yana Meerzon is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is the author of three books, most recently Performance, Subjectivity, Cosmopolitanism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She co-edited nine collections of articles, including Handbook on Theatre and Migration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023; with Steve Wilmer). Her current research project is entitled ‘Between Migration and Neo-Nationalism(s): Performing the European Nation — Playing a Foreigner,’ which has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Published

2025-09-02

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2025): Exile and (Neo)Nationalism

Section

Editorial

Copyright (c) 2025 Pieter Verstraete, Yana Meerzon

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.