Maggie Inchley

My research investigates issues of cultural audibility in contemporary performance. I often focus specifically on the voice, attending to how theatre makers script and perform voices, and how audiences hear, listen and respond to voices. In articles in the journal Contemporary Theatre Review and Theatre Research International I have explored themes such as the cultural audibility of young people, and the performance of testimony of violence against women in globalised contexts. I have also published on the work of black British playwrights Kwame Kwei-Armah, debbie tucker green and Roy Williams. My monograph, Voice and New Writing, 1997-2007, uses the idea of voicescapes to understand the ways that voices articulated identity in theatre and politics during the New Labour government.

Recently I have been exploring sonorous articulations of identity and 'sonorous dramaturgies' in singing, gig theatre, and choral performance.

In practice research, I am exploring how socially engaged performance can provide opportunities for culturally marginalised voices to be heard. My AHRC funded collaborative project, The Verbatim Formula (TVF), with People’s Palace Projects, uses techniques of verbatim theatre to gather testimonies from children and adults with experience of the social care system, aiming to create spaces for dialogue and change. TVF has led to a series of residential workshops for care-experienced young people at QMUL and three other London universities. Its research is participatory, and action-oriented, working with young people as co-researchers. See more about TVF in the Public Engagement section of this profile.

Selected research consultation:

A New Direction (Arts Council NPO) webinar on ‘Co-creation in the Arts’, January 2024.
‘Young People’s Identity’, for Partnership for Young London and University of Huddersfield, October 2020.
‘Student Engagement Consultation’, Office for Students, August 2019.
Become Charity, Consultation of Educational Needs of Looked-After Children, 2018
Greater London Authority Peer Outreach Team Enquiry into Children's Rights, Westminster, 2017 and 2018
Conference Papers:

Selected conference papers:
'Emlyn Williams, ‘The Corn is Green’: Welsh Sonority and the British Aural Lens’, IFTR Conference, University of Cologne, June 2025.

TaPRA Award Winner Panel, 2024: ‘In Conversation with Curious Monkey and The Verbatim Formula; The Values and Costs of Youth Theatre’, Northumbria University, September 2024.

‘The Verbatim Formula: Participatory Research with Care-Experienced Young People’, Talking Theatre for Young Audiences, International Conference, University of Galway, 2020

‘Transvocalism in Jo Clifford’s Swan Song, Eve: Opening My Queer Ears’, IFTR Belgrade, July 2018

‘The Verbatim Formula: Making Places in Higher Education’, Participatory Action Research Connecting Communities Conference, University of Greenwich, 2017.

‘Gender, Performance and Political Authority’, Invited Speaker Politics and Drama Interdisciplinary Symposium, University of Surrey, 2017.

‘Woman Hearing in Manwatching’, Women in Comedy Symposium, University of Salford, 2017.

‘Framing Transsexual Lives in Tinsel Town’, TAPRA, University of Salford, 2017.

‘Dickie Beau’s “Playback”: Mediation as an Identifying (and Erasing)(and/ or Androgynous) Practice’, Voice and Identity Symposium, University of Winchester, 2017.
‘Scotland’s Siren: “The Most Dangerous Woman in Politics”?’, Politicians & Other Performers, Birkbeck College University of London, 2017.
Verbatim Practice as Research in Applied Theatre with Looked After Young People and the Care Sector: An ‘Aesthetics of Care’ Through Aural Attention, Performing Care Symposium, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, 2016.
‘The Verbatim Formula: Performance Based Research with Looked After Young People’, Youth Matters: Participatory Arts as a Creative Space for Young People’s Social Explorations Conference, University of Greenwich, 2016.
‘The Verbatim Formula: Building Dialogue in the Twenty-first Century UK Care System’, Theatre and Attachment Conference, QMUL and Wellcome Trust, 2016.
‘Revisiting Feminisms and debbie tucker green’, IFTR, University of Stockholm, 2016.
‘Representing Margaret: Voicing Britannia’, Parliamentary Rhetoric Conference, QMUL 2016.
‘“Calm Down Dear”: His-terical Voices in the House of Commons’, IFTR Hyderabad 2015.‘Theatre of Advocacy: “Asking for It” and the Audibility of Women in Nirbhaya,“the Fearless” and of Malala, the “Heroine”’, CDE, Barcelona, 2015.
'The Verbatim Formula: caring for care leavers in the neoliberal university', Research in Drama and Education, 24:3 (2019), 413-419, DOI: 10.1080/13569783.2019.1604128
The Verbatim Formula, 'It's Child's Play: The Performance that Lets Young People in Care Share Their Stories,' Guardian,
http://goo.gl/n4BH96 http://www.theverbatimformula.org.uk/
The Verbatim Formula Making Places Guide: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iyns9bN5rkib_v6lNpVMG9YsdkK7dQPy/view
'Touring Testimonies', Lateral, 5.2 (2016), http://csalateral.org/wp/issue/5-2/touring-testimonies-rebalancing-public-realm-human-rights-inchley/