My broad area of research interest is early modern English drama, in both print and performance. My first monograph, Playbooks and their Readers in Early Modern England (Routledge, 2022), examined how and why people read plays in England prior to the Restoration. My current project, which I’m funded to work on via a two-year Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, focuses on the provenance and preservation histories of surviving copies of playbooks printed in England in the seventeenth century that are now housed in libraries in Australia and New Zealand. I’m interested in how these book histories intersect with the broader histories of migration and colonialism in these locations, and in how researchers and librarians can or should take account of local political contexts and decolonising efforts when doing or facilitating research using cultural artefacts prized by the settler culture.
I retain a longstanding interest in Shakespeare in performance, and am the author of the introduction to the new Oxford World’s Classics edition of Romeo and Juliet (Oxford University Press, 2024).
I am on a research-only fellowship at Oxford, though I’ve taught a broad range of courses in my role at Massey University in New Zealand, from Shakespeare to contemporary women’s writing.
I am on sabbatical from my usual role as Senior Lecturer in English at Massey University in New Zealand, where I have worked since 2017.
I am current Vice-President of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association.
