Gabriella Giannachi
Reader/Senior lecturer in Drama, University of Exeter
Job advertised in The Times Higher , November 28 2003

An investment of £3.7 million in the drama department at Exeter University has created an opportunity for new areas of research in drama and theatre. The expansion of the department will include new buildings and an increase in the number of postgraduates and undergraduates.

Gabriella Giannachi was appointed to the new position of senior lecturer in drama. Her research interests are contemporary theatre, dramaturgy and new media theatre.

Her research investigates the construction and performance of presence in mediated and simulated environments.

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"Presence is something that is performed and constructed rather than something that simply exists," she says. "I am interested in how virtual characters in video and virtual environments can achieve presence."

She is also interested in the response and engagement of art with biotechnology and genomics. "Artists all over the world are working with bio art - art through biology - by modifying organisms," she says. "I am hoping to introduce this to the students at a theo- retical level."

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She says the drama department at Exeter is a good place to continue her research. "It is an exciting department within a very vibrant city."

Dr Giannachi was an undergraduate at Turin University, where she studied foreign law, before undertaking a PhD on the use of silence in modern drama at Cambridge University.

She took up her first post as lecturer in theatre studies at Lancaster University in 1995. She stayed there for nine years before applying for the Exeter post, which she takes up in September.