Who's who

BA(Hons), PGCED, PhD

Keywords: Popular Theatres; Storytelling; Digital Economy; Brecht; European theatre history

Research interests

My areas of interest fall broadly into the areas of popular and vernacular performance, with particular interests in storytelling, Grand-Guignol and Bertolt Brecht and his contemporaries. My work on storytelling has led me to become involved in researching the relationship between storytelling and digital technology and broader issues relating to the digital economy. I am also interested in stage translation and my work in all the above areas has involved translating performance texts from both German and French.

Recent outputs

‘"It's beyond Candide - it's Švejk" - Wise Foolery in the Work of Jack Lynch, Storyteller' in Crossroads: Performance Studies and Irish Culture, Sara Brady and Fintan Walsh (eds.), Palgrave, pp.45-57. (2008)

‘Tale-enders: Gathering the Oral Narrative Heritage of Welsh Cricket', Journal of the Inclusive Museum, 1:3, pp.83-90 (2008)

‘"I am a Poor, Skinny Man": Persona and physicality in the work of Karl Valentin' (with Dr. Oliver Double, University of Kent), Studies in Theatre and Performance, 28:3, pp.213-221 (2008)

‘A Public Voice: Access, Digital Story and Interactive Narrative' (with Hamish Fyfe, Mandy Rose, Daniel Meadows and Susie Pratt), in A Collaborative Journey: The BBC/AHRC Knowledge Exchange Pilot Programme, BBC/AHRC (in CD format). (2009)

‘The Creation of a Fairy Tale Performance: ‘The King of the Herrings' from John Sampson to Daniel Morden', ‘The Fairy Tale after Angela Carter' Conference, University of East Anglia. (2009)

‘Telling Stories - the power of personal narrative in post-disaster communities' (with Hamish Fyfe and Ailsa Richardson, University of Glamorgan), Dealing with Disasters International Conference, Kathmandu, Nepal. (2009)

Selected earlier outputs

Performance and Practice: Oral Narrative Traditions Among Teenagers in Britain and Ireland, Aldershot: Ashgate. Shortlisted for the 1998 Katherine Briggs Award (1997)

Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (with Richard J Hand). ‘Studies in Performance' Series, University of Exeter Press. Supported by an AHRB Research Grant (2002)

Storytelling and Theatre: Contemporary Professional Storytellers and their Art, ‘Theatre and Performance Practices' Series, Palgrave Supported by an AHRB Research Grant (2005)

London's Grand-Guignol and the Theatre of Horror (with Richard J. Hand), ‘Studies in Performance' Series, University of Exeter Press. Supported by Grants from the British Academy and the Society for Theatre Research . Shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2007 (2007)

‘Brecht and Cabaret' (with Oliver Double), in The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (second edition), Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks (eds.), Cambridge University Press, pp.40-61. (2006)

‘The Grand-Guignol: Aspects of Theory and Practice' (with Richard J Hand). Theatre Research International, vol.25, No.3, 266-75. (2000)

‘The Story was Sufficient: a profile of Michael Harvey, Storyteller'. Cyfrwng, 1. (2004)

‘Karl Valentin's Illogical Subversion: Stand-up Comedy and Alienation Effect', (with Dr. Oliver Double, University of Kent at Canterbury). New Theatre Quarterly. (2004)

‘Karl Valentin's "Father and Son Discuss the War"' (with Dr. Oliver Double, University of Kent), Studies in Theatre and Performance, 27:1, pp. 5-11. (2007)

Current research/forthcoming outputs

Luzel's Folk Tales of Lower Brittany (translated texts with critical introduction), ‘Fairy-Tale Studies' series, Wayne State University Press. (2011)

Blood, Sweat and Sperm: A Grand-Guignol Handbook (with Richard J. Hand), ‘Studies in Performance' Series, University of Exeter Press.(2012)

‘Passing Through the Chink in Snout's Wall: Daniel Morden and The Devil's Violin' in Worlds in Words: Storytelling in Contemporary Theatre, Malgorzata Sugiera and Mateusz Borowski (eds.), Cambridge Scholars Press.(2010/11)

Membership of learned societies, subject associations

Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce (RSA)

Royal Television Society

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Society for Theatre Research

Folklore Society

Editorial boards

Journal of Research in Higher Education

Papyrus (occasional papers on storytelling)

Supervision of research degrees

I am currently supervising five research students. I have supervised to completion three PhD candidates and five Masters by Research candidates and have examined five PhD candidates.

I am particularly interested in supervising research in the following areas:
Popular theatre; storytelling; horror performance; theatre history; digital cultures; stage translation

Other matters of research relevance

I am a member of the Programme Advisory Board for the RCUK's Digital Economy Programme and a member of the Peer Review College for the AHRC. I have also acted as a Peer Reviewer for EPSRC, Scottish Funding Council and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.