Jörn Etzold

Professor of Theater Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum

Jörn Etzold has been Professor of Theater Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum since 2017. He is spokesperson of the Research Unit FOR 5710 Infrastructure. Aesthetics and Supply funded by the German Research Foundation DFG and leads the Subproject 1 on the role of art institutions in processes of deindustrialisation. He also is the spokesperson of the trans-disciplinary Humanities Hub Spaces in Transition: Resources, Entangled Histories, Material Practices at Ruhr University. From2020-2025, he has been PI of the DFG Research Training Group Documentary Practices. Etzold was Senior Fellow of the Maria Sibylla Merian Merian Centre Conviviality–Inequality in Latin America (Mecila) in São Paulo in 2023 and Visiting Associate Professor at Northwestern University, Evanston in 2015. He has also conducted research and taught at the universities of Giessen, Erfurt, Weimar and Frankfurt am Main. He is currently researching infrastructure and aesthetics, theater and performance in post-industrial environments and theater and legal criticism. He has also been active as a theater maker and translator. 

Recent publications include:

• „The Nambikwara Case", in: INSERT. Artistic Practices as Cultural Inquiries, no. 8, Transforming the Anthropo(s)cene, 2025, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17771772 
• "Extraktive Prozesse. Tatorte und Gerichtsorte in Milo Raus Kongo Tribunal", in:  Manuel Baumbach, Yasmin Temelli (ed.): TatOrte: Räume des Kapitalverbrechens von der Antike bis heute, Heidelberg: Winter 2025, pp. 175-197. Prävention. Zur Immunisierung von Körpern und Gemeinwesen (Prevention. In the Immunization of Bodies and Communities), Hamburg: Textem 2023
• „Textuelle Infrastrukturen des Theaters. Dramaturgie als Vermittlung", in : Journal of Literary Theory, vol. 17, no. 1, 2023, pp. 88-110. As editor: Special Issue: Ästhetik der Infrastruktur (Aesthetics of Infrastructure), Sprache und Literatur, vol. 127, no. 1, 2023. 

Forthcoming inter alia:

• As editor with Tomaz Amorim: Aesthetics of Extractivism / Estéticas del extracitvismo, Buenos Aires: CLACSO 2026,
• "Culpa y exposición. Samuel Weber, lector de Walter Benjamin", in: Papel Maquina. Volumen especial "Samuel Weber", Santiago de Chile 2026,
• "Legale Ambiguität und Infrastruktur (São Paulo) Ein Essay", in: Archiv für Mediengeschichte, no. 21, 2024 [2026] and
• Theatres of the Proto-Juridical. The Russell Tribunals on Latin America, London: Routledge 2026.