dr. M.L. (Marline Lisette) Wilders

Marline Lisette Wilders (1978) holds Masters degrees in Arts and Arts Policy (2002), and in Art and Architectural History (2003) from the University of Groningen. She specialises in empirical research methods, more specific in audience and reception research, with a focus on aesthetic experiences in relationship to the experience of space and place.

From 2002 onwards she lecturered for several years on arts policy, arts sociology and academic skills at the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen. Between 2008 and 2011 she worked as a consultant mediating between commissioners, architects and end users at a consultancy office in the field of public real estate, based in Zwolle and Amsterdam.

January 2012 she received her PhD title from the University of Groningen. Her dissertation Theaterbeleving in het belevenistheater investigated the theatre experience in experience theatres and explores the effects of the architectural characteristics of theatre buildings on the experience of the theatrical event. She was appointed Assistant Professor in the Cultural Studies programme of the University of Amsterdam where she taught courses on art and culture in the public domain; cultural policy; arts management and arts marketing; cultural history; and audience and reception research in museums and in the theatre, between 2011-2014. 

In 2013 the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) awarded her a Rubicon fellowship for the project  From working space to theatre space; the user perspective , on the effects of adaptive reuse of industrial heritage sites for the functioning of the performing arts and built industrial heritage in society. She executed this project as a visiting post-doctoral researcher at the Interuniversitary Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning of the Polytechnic University of Turin between 2014-2016. A second post-doc executed between 2015-2018 concerned the uses and re-uses of different types of heritage through the study of jazz and improvised music festivals, within the project CHIME (Cultural Heritage and Improvised Music in European Festivals), funded under the JPI Cultural Heritage program by the European Community.

Wilders returned to Groningen in 2016 where she is currently Assistant Professor in Arts in Society at University College Groningen, teaching courses in Artivism, Visual and Arts Based Methods, Leadership in Culture, research skills and providing project-based education. Between 2016-2023 she was in addition affiliated with the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at The Faculty of Arts where she taught courses on research methods for Social Sciences and Humanities and Cultural Leadership and was the second year coordinator of the Research Master Cultural Leadership. For the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health she is coordinator of the interdisciplinary university minor More Healthy Years, which she also helped to develop and in which she was a core teacher for three years. She was Community of Expertise Leader Interdisciplinary Education for the Teaching Academy Groningen (TAG) from of February -June 2024. Morover she is part of the in 2021 started Enlight Quali co-ordination team of lecturers in qualitative research.

Furthermore, Wilders is a member of the Theatre Architecture Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research since 2006 and participates in STEP; the Project on European Theatre Systems since 2005. STEP deals with various issues concerning the comparison between the functioning of theatre systems in different cultural regions in Europe. In 2009 the group launched a book with contributions from authors of all participating countries in which Wilders published on her PhD research. In 2015, when the group celebrated it's 10 years anniversary, the STEP City Study was published in a double theme-issue of Amfiteater (see research publications). Wilders is co-editor of the book Studying European Theatre Audiences which contains a methodological reflection on the STEP City Study and appeared within the Routledge Theatre & Performance Series in Audience Research in 2025.