Skip to main content

Shauna Janssen, PhD

Associate Professor, Theatre
Concordia University Research Chair in Performative Urbanism (2018-2023), Fine Arts

On sabbatical July 1 2023-2024


Shauna Janssen, PhD
Office: S-GM 500.01  
Guy-De Maisonneuve Building,
1550 De Maisonneuve W.
Phone: (514) 848-2424 ext. 4555
Email: shauna.janssen@concordia.ca
Website(s): PULSE
Availability: On sabbatical July 1 2023-2024.
ORCID: 0000-0002-4602-5989

Dr Shauna Janssen


I am an interdisciplinary artist-researcher, curator, performance designer, and educator working and living in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal, on the unceded Indigenous lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation. My teaching, research, and creative practice are consonant with performative, site-specific, intersectional, interdisciplinary, and collaborative approaches to art making. 


At Concordia I am Associate Professor of Performance Creation in the Department of Theatre, Creative Director of PULSE, and Studio Director of Immersive Storytelling housed at Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology.  Between 2018 and 2023 I was appointed a Concordia University Research Chair in Performative Urbanism, and from 2018-2020 I was the Director of Concordia's Institute for Urban Futures. 


My transversal approach to teaching has been shaped by twenty years as an educator and organizer in the field of theatre and twenty years experience working professionally, in the performing and live arts; devising, staging, managing and touring, nationally and internationally new contemporary Canadian works created for theatre, opera, and dance. In Canada, I have worked with companies such as Volcano Theatre, Theatre Columbus, the Tarragon and Factory Theatres, Queen of Puddings, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, among others, as well as toured with theatre projects to the Belfry Theatre, Citadel Theatre, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, and the National Arts Centre.

Current research-creation activities are focused on the dramaturgy and creation of new media performance, and site-responsive mixed reality scenographies that critically engage 3D visualization technologies in queer and feminist productions of space. My ongoing research and creation activities are focused on performative and curatorial engagements with the spatial politics of urban change, and often takes the form of site-specific urban interventions, feminist, collaborative art and community-engaged projects.  

In Montreal, I have collaborated with a variety of artist run centres including La Fonderie Darling, Heritage Montréal, Centaur Theatre, Montréal Arts Interculturel, Le Sud-Ouest de Montréal, Parks Canada, and the Centre d’histoire de Montréal. I am a founding member and formerly co-director of Points de vue, a Montreal based community-engaged art, research, and urban activist platform. I have given public lectures and presentations at Mutek (2019), L'Observatoire des médiations culturelles (2022), and for cultural institutions such as the Canadian Centre for Architecture (Ephemeral City, 2010), Articule (“Would you be my curator?” 2012), SBC Gallery, and The McCord Museum (City Talks, 2013). Between 2018 and 2022 I served as the Quebec Representative for the Canadian Association of Theatre Research (CATR). Since 2019 I have been an associate artist with Imago Theatre (Montreal), focusing on feminist approaches to urban dramaturgy and performance creation. In 2014, I was the Associate Producer and Production Director for Manifest: Choreographing Social Movements in the Americas, the 9th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at New York University, which was hosted by Concordia and attended by over eight hundred artists, scholars, and activists from across the Americas. 

Internationally, as part of my performance design and research-creation activities I have led workshops, given scholarly/ artist talks, and participated in various artistic and scholarly residencies hosted by institutions such as the Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistik, Berlin; the School of Art, Design & Architecture Creative Exchange Institute, University of Tasmania, Australia; the Department of Spatial Design, Massey University, New Zealand; the DesignLab, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile;  Performance Design at Roskilde University, Denmark. I have staged site-specific artistic works and performance design collaborations locally in Montreal, Quebec, as well as at Città Invisibili, Teatro Potlatch, Fara Sabina, Italy (2018); for the XX Architecture and Urbanism Biennial, “Unpostponable Dialogues.” Valparaiso, Chile (2017); the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (2019 & 2023); and at Performance Arcade in Wellington New Zealand/Aotearoa (2020). For the International Federation of Theatre Research I am co-convenor of the Theatre & Architecture Working Group (2021-2025).

My writing on site-specific art, urban scenography, public space, performance pedagogy, and performative art practices have been published and translated (French, Spanish, German) in numerous essays, exhibition catalogues, art monographs, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journals, including with the Journal of Theatre & Performance Design, FIELD: a journal of socially-engaged art criticism, JAR (journal of artistic research), and PARtake: the Journal of Performance as Research. I am co-editor of the anthology Performing Institutions: Contested Sites & Structures of Care (Intellect, 2023).

My research-creation projects are supported by the Social Sciences Humanties and Research Council, the Fonds de recherché Québec - Société et Culture (FRQ-SC), and the Office of the Vice President Research and Graduate Studies, Concordia University.

I regularly supervise graduate researchers working across and/or at the intersections of contemporary performance creation, architecture and design, immersive and new media technologies, geography and urban studies, and studio arts - housed within Concordia's Individualized Program, and/or the Humanities PhD, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture. If you are a potential graduate student and would like to work with me, I am interested in supervising research projects on contemporary performance and spatial practices taking place within the city, artistic investigations with the spatial politics of urban change, site-specific and intermedial performance creation, immersive performance design, political approaches to making with extended and mixed reality scenographies, (histories of) art and urban activism, expanded and new media dramaturgy, queer and feminist performance practices, interdisciplinary and hemispheric performance research-creation methodologies, and open to working with adjacent fields of study. Research-creation applicants must have a strong commitment to critical theory and writing, as well as practice.










Teaching activities


Research Projects

  • CHEM 222 - Introductory Organic Chemistry II
  • CHEM 324 - Organic Chemistry III: Organic Reactions
  • CHEM 424/623 - Organic Synthesis
  • CHEM 428 - Medicinal Chemistry


Selected Publications


Participation activities (peer reviewed conferences)


Art & Curatorial Projects, Interdisciplinary Collaborations


Visiting Researcher/ Artist-Residencies and Scholarly Invitations

Back to top

© Concordia University