In this episode, I chat with Dr. Emmanuela Wroth. Dr. Wroth is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge whose research explores nineteenth-century French music theatre, celebrity, and the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class. Her current project, Diasporic Divas: Racialized and Gendered Celebrity in Western Europe, 1715–1925, recovers the overlooked contributions of Black women performers and Afrodiasporic performance traditions in shaping European divadom from its eighteenth-century origins. She earned her PhD from Durham University (in collaboration with the Bowes Museum) and previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in French Music at the University of Toronto. Her forthcoming monograph, Courting Celebrity: Creating the Courtesan on the Popular Parisian Stage and Beyond, 1831–1859, examines gender and class politics in nineteenth-century performance culture. Actively engaged in public scholarship, Dr. Wroth collaborates with institutions such as the National Gallery and Tate, and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
