dr. M.L. (Marline Lisette) Wilders
Marline Lisette Wilders (1978) is Assistant Professor Arts in Society, holding Masters degrees in Arts and Arts Policy (2002) and in Art and Architectural History (2003), and a PhD in Theatrical Experience and Theatre Architecture (January 2012) from the University of Groningen. Her dissertation Theaterbeleving in het belevenistheater (in Dutch) 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.
Wilders specialises in empirical research methods, more specificly in audience and reception research, with a focus on aesthetic experiences in relationship to the experience of space and place. She is currently co-PI of the Erasmus + KA220-HED project ACT UP! Active Citizenship through Theatre for Urban Politics (2024-2027).
She teaches courses in Artivism, Visual and Arts Based Methods, Leadership in Culture, research skills and provides project-based education at UCG. For the Aletta Jacobs School of Public Health she was coordinator of the interdisciplinary university minor More Healthy Years from 2022-2025 and a core teacher for three years prior to becoming coordinator. She was Community of Expertise Leader Interdisciplinary Education for the Teaching Academy Groningen (TAG) from February 2022-June 2024. 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.
Between 2015-2018 she worked as a post-doc in the University of Amsterdam based team of CHIME: Cultural Heritage and Improvised Music in European Festivals, funded under the JPI Cultural Heritage program by the European Community, exploring the uses and re-uses of different types of heritage through the study of jazz and improvised music festivals. From 2014-2016 she executed her project From working space to theatre space; the user perspective , for which she was awarded a Rubicon fellowship by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). For this project she was a visiting post-doctoral researcher at the Interuniversitary Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning of the Polytechnic University of Turin, investigating the effects of adaptive reuse of industrial heritage sites for the functioning of the performing arts and built industrial heritage in post-industrial society.
Previously she held a position as Assistant Professor in the Cultural Studies programme of the University of Amsterdam, teaching 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 (2011-2014). 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. Prior, she had been lecturing for several years on arts policy, arts sociology and academic skills at the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Groningen, while working on her PhD research.
Furthermore, Wilders is a member of STEP; the Project on European Theatre Systems since its foundation in 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 in which Wilders published a chapter 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 was co-editor of the STEP-book Studying European Theatre Audiences, that appeared within the Routledge Theatre & Performance Series in Audience Research in 2025.