Romanska’s Book on Digital Access to Performing Arts Selected for International Library Netwrok

Digital Access to the Performing Arts: A Comparative Study of Legal and Structural Challenges, by Performing Arts Professor Magda Romanska, published by Bristol University Press earlier this year, was selected by Knowledge Unlatched — a network of 200+ international libraries — for its 2026 Digital Lives collection, one of 20 titles on technology and society named as most significant this year.

The book argues for increased accessibility to the performing arts using digital tools, and looks at how the COVID 19 pandemic “exposed both the potential and the shortcomings of digital programming, particularly for disabled and marginalized audiences.” The book stems from the Digital Access Research Project, which Romanska coordinated with Harvard’s metaLAB and the Berkman Klein Center for the Internet and Society.

The book examines one of the “defining legal tensions of our time,” Romanska said. What happens when copyright law and civil rights law collide?

Romanska said her book offers a comparative legal framework, based on actual case studies from across the US, UK, EU, and Australia, that shows where this collision has already happened, and the repercussions when it isn’t resolved.

“The question I ask about disabled audiences and digital access to theatre is the same question AI is forcing onto every industry: when copyright protection actively excludes people from culture, which right wins?” Romanska said. “Right now, that question has no clear legal answer — and the stakes are enormous, not just for the arts but for libraries, archives, research, and the AI datasets being built from all of it.”