I am studying for a PhD at the Shakespeare Institute (University of Birmingham), partnered with the Royal Shakespeare Company as a Collaborative Doctoral Award through the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership. My project is based on the RSC's archive of promptbooks, copies of Shakespeare's plays edited and cut down for performance on the stage, which are held at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. I'll be looking at how the RSC's general practice for cutting Shakespeare has developed over time, and considering some of the impetus and practicalities behind the cutting process in general, as well as what future directions this “promptbook practice” might take. I am supervised by Dr Abigail Rokison-Woodall at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, and Jacqui O’Hanlon at the Royal Shakespeare Company.
More generally, I am interested in contemporary performance and Shakespeare's afterlives. While obtaining my MA in Shakespeare Studies from the Shakespeare Institute, I co-created an iOS app called SonnetShuffle to reconsider how we read and think about Shakespeare’s Sonnets.