In-between Imagination and Politics: Writing the History of Circus

Franziska Trapp is a postdoctoral researcher at the University Libre de Bruxelles. She is the founder of the research project Circus | Studies and organizer of international conferences including Semiotics of the Circus (2015), UpSideDown - Circus and Space (2017), Semaine du Cirque (2020), Écrire l’histoire du cirque (2022) and New Circus - New Architectures? (2024). She is the initiator of the Young Researchers Network in Circus Studies (YOUR | Circus), co-initiator of the Circus Arts Research Platform (CARP), and co-editor of the academic journal Circus: Arts, Life and Sciences. Trapp has worked for various circus productions such as the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain (FR) and Cirque Bouffon (DE) and collaborated as a dramaturge with Tall Tales Company (NL), Sysmo (BE), Julia Berger (DE) and Cie Equinoctis (FR), among others. She was awarded third place as Germany’s Best Junior Research Talent of 2019 (Deutscher Hochschulverband) and received the DGS Young Researcher Award 2020 for her PhD entitled "Lektüren des Zeitgenössischen Zirkus" (De Gruyter 2020, Routledge 2024).