Professor Joanne Tompkins was seconded to the Australian Research Council as Executive Director of the Humanities and Creative Arts panel, for a period of three years (until 2019).

Her research interests include spatial theories and virtual reality; post-colonial, intercultural, and multicultural drama, literature, and theory; performance theories; and feminist performance.

Her current research includes 3D visualisation and modelling of theatre spaces; the spatial theory of heterotopia; space in Australian and Canadian theatre; database of Australian performance; multicultural theories and drama, and intercultural performance.

She is the author of articles on: Spatial theory and virtual reality; post-colonial, multicultural, and intercultural drama and theory; Australian drama and literature and Canadian drama;

She is author of: Theatre’s Heterotopias: Space and the Analysis of Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; and Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre. Basingstoke: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2006.

She is co-author of: A Global Doll's House: Ibsen and Distant Visions. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016 (with Julie Holledge, Frode Helland and Jonathan Bollen); Women's Intercultural Performance, Routledge, 2000 (with Julie Holledge); and Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics, Routledge, 1996 (with Helen Gilbert).

She is editor of: Theatre Journal, "Space and the Geographics of Theatre," a special issue of Modern Drama, 2004; "Theatre and the Canadian Imaginary," a special issue of Australasian Drama Studies, 1996.

Membership: Life Member of Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (club/association)