Piret Kruuspere

Piret Kruuspere graduated from the University of Tartu with a major field in Estonian Literature, and defended her MA thesis there on Estonian diaspora drama and theatre. Currently, she is completing her PhD studies at the University of Helsinki on the topic of Estonian memory theatre. She has been working at the Under and Tuglas Literature Centre of the Estonian Academy of Sciences since its foundation in 1993 (as administrative director of the institution  1993–1996; in 1984–1993 she worked at the Institute for Language and Literature, the predecessor of the Literature Centre).

Piret Kruuspereʼs main research areas are Estonian dramatic literature and the reception of theatre in Estonian literature (including dramatisations of national-minded prose classics); Estonian memory theatre (based on examples from the works of Rein Saluri, Madis Kõiv, and Merle Karusoo), the history of Estonian theatre and theatre-writing, and Estonian literature in exile. She has published approximately one hundred scholarly publications and has edited more than twenty books on literary scholarship and the history of theatre. The most important of these are the collective monographs Estonian Exile Literature in the 20th Century (2008) and Estonian Drama 1965–1985, published in cooperation with the Estonian Theatre Union and the Drama School of the Estonian Music and Theatre Academy (Volume I 2015; volume II in preparation). She has taught a range of courses at the University of Tartu, the Estonian Institute for the Humanities, and, since 2005, at the Drama School of the Estonian Music and Theatre Academy.