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Author.
Lecturer.

Doctor of Audiences.

I publish & speak around the world
on culture, theatre, media, & the
audience experience.

An award-winning cultural studies scholar based at the University of Bristol, Dr Kirsty Sedgman has spent her career studying how we construct and maintain our competing value systems, working out how people can live side by side in the same world yet come to understand it in such totally different ways.

Her research asks how audiences find value in cultural participation. How are these experiences made meaningful within their lives?

Kirsty is the author of numerous academic publications and is Editor of the Routledge book series in Audience Research.

She has also spoken on the BBC’s Front Row and World Service programmes, at BroadwayCon in New York and IETM in Croatia, and on numerous podcasts and local radio shows.

Her writing has appeared in The Stage, Exeunt, and the BBC’s Expert Network, and her work has featured in outlets like the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, and the New York Times

Trade Books

On Being Unreasonable

Breaking the Rules and Making Things Better

(Faber & Faber, 2023)

Academic Work

The Reasonable Audience

Theatre Etiquette, Behaviour Policing, and the Live Performance Experience

(Palgrave, 2018)

Locating the Audience

How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales

(Intellect & Chicago Uni Press, 2016)

Theatre Fandom

Coming soon…

(Uni of Iowa Press, TBC)