About Sarah
Sarah E. Robbins is an artist/educator from Toronto, Ontario. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Toronto, working as the Project Manager for the SSHRC-funded Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance in Canada which successfully secured a 7-year, $2,500,000 SSHRC Partnership Grant in May 2024. Sarah completed her PhD at the University of Toronto’s Graduate Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies (CDTPS) in 2022. She also holds an Hons. B.A. and a diploma in Professional Actor Training from the Theatre & Drama Studies program jointly held at the University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College, and an M.A. from the CDTPS.
She has taught undergraduate courses in Theatre History, Public Speaking, and Interpersonal Communication for the University of Waterloo’s Communication Arts Department, Theatre History courses for the University of Windsor, as well as Drama & Theatre and Acting Training at Mount Allison University. In the Summer of 2021, she developed a new syllabus for her course “Race, Gender and Performance”, and in summer 2024, she developed a syllabus for the new course “Writing About Performance” for the University of Toronto.
Sarah co-organized the inaugural 2023 Association of Acting Coaches and Educators (AACE) Conference at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre. This conference builds upon the 2019 Got Your Back (GYB) Acting Educators Conference she helped co-organize, and which was based upon her co-authored article “The State of Acting Training in Canada” for HowlRound Theatre Commons published in 2019. The first of its kind in Canada, AACE offers community and training opportunities to those who teaching acting both privately and within institutions. She also co-organized the 2019 Festival of Original Theatre (FOOT) Conference at CDTPS on the theme of "Equity & Diversity in the Performing Arts." Other recent projects include working as a Research Assistant for the Jackman Humanities Institute Working Group “Imagining a Music-Theatre Curriculum in North America,” and acting as a core member of Got Your Back Canada (GYB).
Other recent projects include working as Research Assistant to Drs. Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Nicole Nolette on the SSHRC-funded project, Staging Better Futures/Mettre en scène meilleurs avenirs, and serving on the project’s Governance Committee. She also serves on the Canadian Association for Theatre Research’s Board of Directors: from 2021-2023 as the Graduate Student Representative, and 2024-2026 as the Unaffiliated Scholar Representative. In her role, she has worked on the association’s Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression Committee.
She has shared her work at international conferences for the Canadian Association for Theatre Research (CATR), International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), and Performance Studies International (PSi), and has published her work in Canadian Theatre Review, HowlRound Theatre Commons, Intermission Magazine, and alt.theatre magazine.
Sarah also enjoys riding motorcycles, particularly going on two-up adventure travels with her partner Kevin. She and Kevin live in Toronto with their cat Lily.