I am a Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Drama.

In 1992 I completed a B.A. in English and three years of acting training at the Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique of Orléans. While researching my M.A. thesis on Women's Roles in British Comedies 1880-1930, I discovered the lingering presence of a censor of plays as late as 1968.

Theatre censorship in 20th century England became my central research interest. Having completed a M.Phil in Drama, with a dissertation titled 'Silencing & Licensing: the Censorship of Shaw's The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet' (1995), I devoted  my Ph.D thesis - 'In the Wings of the Lord Chamberlain's Office: Theatre Censorship 1900-1968' - to exploring how the three taboos were variously treated by playwrights and censors. As a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Theatre department of the University of Warwick, I interviewed a number of dramatists and theatre practitioners and wrote six chapters of Theatre Censorship: From Walpole to Wilson (Oxford University Press, 2007).

In doing so, I met Arnold Wesker in 2003, who invited me to consult the private archive he had compiled over his play The Journalists. This meeting opened up my second field of research, and I have since further interviewed him, translated his Shylock, and published on his work, more recently in Arnold Wesker: Fragments and Visions (Intellect, 2021).

My third research interest - contemporary Irish theatre - developed in Cork and focuses on the work of Corcadorca Theatre Company. In that field I have published chapters and journal articles, and co-edited Contemporary Irish Theatre: Populating the Stage (Palgrave, 2017)

 I have recently completed three co-edited volumes on censorship - Adult Themes. British Cinema and the X Certificate in the Long 1960s (Bloomsbury, 2023); and Theatre Censorship in Contemporary Europe: Silence and Protest (University of Exeter Press, 2024); and the Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship (2025). I am also co-editor of the book series Palgrave Studies in Cultural Censorship, and an Advisory Board member of Methuen Drama Agitations.

My interests include theatre censorship and dramatic literature from the 1950s onwards, in particular the theatre of Arnold Wesker in England and contemporary Irish theatre.

The issues call for an inter-disciplinary approach (literary and historical) and my work therefore involves a reflection on the political as well as cultural context. I engage with empirical and archival research, e.g for censorship the Lord Chamberlain Play Collection at the BL but also a questionnaire survey and interviews of playwrights and theatre practitioners; the archive of Arnold Wesker at the Harry Ransom Center (University of Texas in Austin); oral history and interviews in relation to contemporary Irish theatre. 

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY DRAMA AND THEATRE; BRITISH DRAMA; THEATRE CENSORSHIP I welcome Ph.D projects in these fields of study. Modules taught, inter alia: POSTGRADUATE TEACHING M.A. in American Literature and Film (O'Neill, Williams, Miller, Albee, Mamet) M.A. in Modernities (O'Neill, Beckett, Stoppard, Artaud, Gordon Craig) M.A. in Irish Writing (Beckett, Enda Walsh) EN6009 - Conference preparation Guest seminar intervention: ‘Theatre Censorship – a cat and mouse game?’ Invited seminar, PG7004 Master Class Module: Contemporary Theoretical Paradigms in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Knowledge and Control: Historical And Contemporary Perspectives. UCC, June 2013. UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING Lecture modules -EN1001 Foundations of Critical Practice - Drama (Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ionesco) * EN1003 Modern literature (Osborne, Beckett) * EN1004 Theories - Approaches to theatre (from Aristotle to Brecht) *EN2076 Theories of Drama * EN1012 Drama and Protest (Wesker) EN1101 Contexts (Chekhov and PanPan Theatre Company) EN2074 Studies in English Drama after 1660 (Congreve) EN2077 Inventing Modern Drama (from Ibsen to Wesker) * EN3079 Contemporary Culture (Caryl Churchill, Sarah Kane, Martin Crimp) EN3091 Theory and Practice EN3098 Text into Film (from Shakespeare to Hollywood) Seminar modules *EN3006-EN3007 Pinter between 60s Social Realism and the Theatre of the Absurd. EN2006 George Bernard Shaw DR3010/DR2007: Acting out – Keys to Naturalist Acting (Department of Drama and Theatre Studies) EN2006-7 Harold Pinter - Sexual Politics and Political Discourse EN3008 Drama and Controversy EN2003 Revisiting the Swinging 60s EN3003 Research in Drama * denotes modules coordinated