Audience and reception research in the arts, theatrical events, arts-based methods, research through design, cultural leadership

Marline lisette Wilders received her PhD from the University of Groningen in 2012. Her dissertation Theaterbeleving in het belevenistheater investigated the theatre experience in experience theatres and explored the effects of the architectural characteristics of theatre buildings on the experience of the theatrical event. In 2011 she joined the Cultural Studies programme of the University of Amsterdam where she was Assistant Professor until 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 Assistant Professor in Arts in Society at University College Groningen. Between 2016-2023 she was also affiliated with the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at The Faculty of Arts where she was the second year coordinator of the Research Master Cultural Leadership. 

Furthermore, Wilders is a member of the Theatre Architecture Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research and participates in STEP; the Project on European Theatre Systems since. 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). A new book with the title Studying European Theatre Audiences which contains a methodological reflection on the STEP City Study is currently in production and will appear within the Routledge Theatre & Performance Series in Audience Research.

Wilders is an experienced teacher teaching in the areas of arts sociology, artivism, arts-based methods, cultural policy, arts management and marketing, cultural leadership and methodology at BA, MA and ReMA level.