Contact
Biography
Qualifications
Ph.D (Trinity College Dublin)
Expertise Summary
I am the Head of Drama and Creative Writing in the School of English.
Teaching Expertise
I teach drama, theatre, and performance (text, history, theory and practice) across all three undergraduate year groups and at postgraduate level too. I have expertise in modern and contemporary European theatre and performance, with a particular focus on modern and contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Here in the School of English I teach the history, theory and practice of modern and contemporary European and Irish theatre in lectures, seminars, and practical workshops.
Research Expertise
My research is interdisciplinary, transnational and collaborative. Broadly speaking, my research focuses on how drama, theatre and performance intersects with Health Humanities.
I am an expert on the life and work of Irish playwright: J.M. Synge. I am currently exploring how Synge's Irish modernism creates new knowledge about mental health and transnational exchange.
My forthcoming indesciplinary monograph, J.M. Synge's Emotions: Irish Modernism and Mental Health explores the history of mental health in Synge's life and works.
My forthcoming interdisciplinary edited collection Synge and Transnational Modernisms explains how Synge's modernism challenges institutionalised knowledge about centres, borders, and multiculturalism.
I also use creative practice as a collaborative and communicative tool to create new knowledge and understanding about health care practice. I work as a community-based workshop facilitator, leading workshops on mental health in prisons, and with children and young adults with chronic illnesses and handicaps. I have also made educational films for healthcare practitioners in training.
For more detailed information about my research expertise, see my Research Summary, below.
Professional Affiliations; Outreach and Public Engagement
I am a member of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR). From 2016 to 2020 I served as the Secretary-General (Communications) for IFTR, and sat on the Executive Committee from 2016-2021. I am also a member of the Irish Society for Theatre Research, and sat on the Executive Committee from 2014-2019.
I have given many public workshops/lectures and post-show discussions on twentieth-and-twenty-first-century British and Irish playwrights. I've also been invited to speak about Synge's work at Ireland's National Theatre (the Abbey Theatre) on more than one occasion, as well as at the Embassy of Ireland in Ankara, Turkey. I also wrote the programme note to the Royal National Theatre's 2025/2026 production of The Playboy of the Western World. I also wrote the notes to the Royal National Theatre's publication of The Playboy of the Western World.
PhD Supervision
I have supervised and examined PhDs on contemporary British theatre; contemporary Irish theatre; and the theatre of psychiatrist, and intellectual: Frantz Fanon. I warmly encourage PhD applications from students interested in working on European theatre; British and Irish theatre; or the Health Humanities. Please do get in contact!
Research Summary
I am currently dividing my time between four research projects, all of which I am very excited about.
The first is a new book called J.M. Synge's Emotions: Irish Modernism and Mental Health. The purpose of this interdisciplinary book is to examine the history of negative emotions in the production and reception of J.M. Synge's Irish modernism. The book explains how unmanageable negative emotions in Synge's works contributed to a burgeoning culture of self-help and therapy that we now take for granted in our contemporary cultures of emotional tolerance and understanding. My latest research on this topic, an essay called "Synge on Vagrancy: Labour, Workhouses and the Feeble-Minded" was published in Irish Studies Review in November 2020. The book is under contract with Oxford University Press and will be published in 2027.
The second project is a collection of essays entitled Synge and Transnational Modernisms. This collection considers how Synge's Irish modernism contributed to the development of global modernisms. With a sustained emphasis on theories of transnationalism throughout, the collection will offer interdisciplinary perspectives on how Synge's work influenced different writers, theatre-makers and artists across the globe. My own essay in the collection focuses on the transnational relationship between Antonin Artaud and Synge.The collection is currently under contract with Liverpool University Press and will be published in 2027.
The third project considers how nostalgia is produced and to what effect in contemporary Irish performance. Here, my interest in theatre and the Health Humanities extends to theatre and the environment. I'm particularly concerned with how theatre and performance engages with complicated feelings of nostalgia for the Irish rural in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss. My most recent work on this project has been published in New Theatre Quarterly in 2019 and in The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre in 2023.
The fourth project is called "Performing Cerebral Palsy: Healthcare, Ageing and Access". This interdisciplinary and collaborative project investigates the potential of the creative arts to communicate new knowledge and understanding on ageing and experiences of healthcare in people with cerebral palsy.
Recent Publications
CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2026. "Gemma Edwards. Representing the Rural on the English Stage: Performance and Rurality
in the Twenty-First Century." Journal of Contemporary Drama in English. 14(1), 263-266
CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2025. "Devon". In: JAMES MORAN, ed., Sean O'Casey in Context Cambridge University Press.
CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, ed., 2025. The Playboy of the Western World National Theatre 2025 Playtext. Notes. Methuen.
CHRISTOPHER COLLINS, 2025. "Just a Comedy" Programme Note in The Playboy of the Western World National Theatre 2025 Programme.
Past Research
My first monograph, Theatre and Residual Culture: J.M. Synge and Pre-Christian Ireland was published by Palgrave in 2016, and it was reviewed as 'the most important volume on Synge to be published in decades'.
My second monograph was a guide to arguably Synge's most controversial play, The Playboy of the Western World (Routledge, 2016).
I have also edited and introduced the Methuen Student Edition of The Playboy of the Western World (Methuen, 2021).
My research on contemporary Irish theatre includes articles in New Theatre Quarterly, The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance (Palgrave 2018) and a collection of essays that I co-edited entitled Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination (Palgrave 2014).