SUMMARY

The thread linking my various projects is a unifying interest in afterlives, adaptations, and remediations of early modern and other classical drama. Under that umbrella, my work is best described as inter- and multi-disciplinary, with links to theatre, drama, and performance, English literature, (digital) cultural studies, fan and fiction studies, feminist and gender studies, and theatre history and historiography.

I have recently completed work on the Measure (Still) for Measure project, which has two related strands:

PRACTICE as RESEARCH – Measure (Still) for Measure

• Long-term, impact-focused project adapting  Shakespeare & Middleton’s Measure for Measure to facilitate discussions about rape culture and instigate cultural and policy changes in educational institutions.
• Currently in the process of applying for Knowledge Exchange Funding through University of Bristol to extend the project’s reach and begin development of a toolkit for publication. This is a major component of the project’s impact agenda. 
• Completed 2017 pilot phase as an artist-in-residence with the Advanced Acting class at Nichols School (NY)
• Awarded a space for Research & Development in 2016 by the Bike Shed Theatre & Exeter City Council.
• International collaboration with partners in the UK, India, Ireland, Canada, France, and the United States
• More information can be found at http://measurestill.wordpress.com.
• Outputs to date, in addition to the monograph detailed below, include an articles in Shakespeare Bulletin and PARtake and an episode of Howlround’s Theater History Podcast (see ‘Publications’), as well as a number of invited talks and workshops.

MONOGRAPH – Canonical Misogyny: Shakespeare and Dramaturgies of Sexual Violence (Edinburgh UP)

• Addresses a persistent and pressing problem in contemporary theatre: how to stage sexual violence without either trivialising or sensationalising it?
• Proposes that looking specifically at dramaturgy helps to describe and counteract the problems that can occur when theatres attempt to ameliorate the essential violence of canonical plays such as Shakespeare’s.
• Updates and expands upon previous work in this area, incorporating relevant research from outside Shakespeare and early modern studies in fields such as philosophy and sociology.
• Focuses on contemporary theatre as a site of meaning-making, departing from most recent studies of violence against women in early modern drama, which tend to be historical and/or text-based in their focus. This means that I think about how particular production choices make meaning in a contemporary theatre setting, rather than how the text works on the page or how Shakespeare’s original theatres might have approached the work.
• Includes critical-reflective chapters that speak directly to the practice-as-research process underpinning the book and the embodied nature of research on sexual violence.

What’s next?

Following the completion of the research summarised above, I will turn my attention towards new projects. Each, in its way, follows on and develops the research summarised above: 

• Making Decolonial Shakespeares (Co-Investigator)
  • Insight Development Grant funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for an initial two-year period
  • PI is Prof. Kim Solga, University of Western Ontario
• Handbook for teachers and theatre practitioners 
  • This will be a trade-focused version of Canonical Misogyny, with an emphasis on exercises for classrooms and rehearsal halls, digestible nuggets of research and analysis, and sample lesson plans. It will be aimed at professionals who may be interested in this work, but have neither the time nor inclination to access it in monograph form. 
• Co-authored book (with Rho Chung) on genderqueer casting in Shakespeare performance 
  • Solicited by Stephen Purcell, Farah Karim-Cooper and Peter Holland, as general editors of the Arden Shakespeare in the Theatre series 
  • Chung and I submitted our proposal in August 2025 and are awaiting peer review.
•  A new, major project called The Devil You Know: Intimacy and Canonical Drama. 
  • This project hypothesises that there are unique challenges – as well as unique rewards – involved in undertaking intimacy work with well-known plays and characters. It proposes to investigate to what extent this is the case and establish best practices