About

I am a design historian, author, and artist based in Birmingham, England.

My academic career began at the University of Warwick, where I completed a degree in Theatre and Performance Studies. I pursued my MA and PhD at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. My research interests have always centred on Shakespeare in performance, broadening in recent years to include costume design, dress history, material culture, and musical theatre. I am now Senior Lecturer in Research and Innovation (Drama) at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

I share my fascination with design by collaborating with arts and heritage organisations, and by creating edible art inspired by historical textiles, objects, and costumes. I have worked with the British Library, Milton’s Cottage, David Parr House, The MERL, Reading Museum, Crawford Art Gallery, and Leighton House on various biscuit art projects. Between October and December 2021, I was Artist in Residence at Jane Austen’s House. I speak about my work regularly: in addition to radio interviews and YouTube videos, I give public talks and lectures on a range of subjects.

My book, Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume: ‘Period Dress’ in Twenty-First-Century Performance, was published by Bloomsbury in June 2022. It is available here.

---

Academic Research: In Detail

My research explores how ideas are communicated through visual elements of performance and culture. My research monograph (Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume: ‘Period Dress’ in Twenty-First-Century Performance) examines how early modern garments are recycled and reimagined in contemporary costume design for Shakespeare. The book deconstructs the ideas, assumptions, and desires that cluster around the clothing of the early modern period, and demonstrates how these associations have been manipulated by theatre practitioners to shape the meanings of Shakespeare’s plays.

To establish how individual costumes interact with broader cultural narratives, I use an interdisciplinary approach to research. My work combines practical knowledge of costume construction processes with original interview material, textual analysis, historical evidence, and critical frameworks drawn from various fields (such as theories of experimental archaeology, cultural tourism, fairy tale, and hauntology). I am interested in the minutiae of modern design – how seams are sewn, which fabrics are used – as well as the widespread movements that have produced our modern relationship with Shakespeare.

Beyond my monograph, I have published on Paul Tazewell’s costume design for the musical Hamilton and on the subject of seventeenth-century festival books.

Top-left photograph by Rebecca Knowles.