A lecturer in theatre at the University of Bristol, UK, Dr. Kirsty Sedgman is a leading scholar of theatre audiences. Her work examines how people experience and find value in the things they see onstage. How are pleasures and disappointments made meaningful within our lives? What does it mean to become a 'theatre fan,’ or to develop intense antipathies? And what can all this tell us about the role of the arts in society, as well as the relationship between cultural institutions, power, identity, and place? She is the author of Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales (Intellect, 2016) and The Reasonable Audience: Theatre Etiquette, Behaviour Policing, and the Live Performance Experience (Palgrave, 2018), as well as editor of a new book on Theatre Fandom (Uni Iowa Press, forthcoming). She's also written about audiences of immersive and promenade theatre, on fan reviews of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, on the Kickstarter campaign to bring Smash's Bombshell to Broadway, and on YouTube reactions to Neil Patrick Harris' iconic 2013 Tony performance. As Editor of Routledge’s book series in Audience Research and the recipient of a British Academy postdoctoral fellowship to research regional audience engagement through time, Sedgman is one of the driving forces in the fields of live performance reception, experience, fandom, and cultural value.