My interest in theatre history and literature was developed during undergraduate studies in drama and English. However it was the opportunity to uncover lost stories in the letters and scrapbooks of long-forgotten performers during postgraduate fieldwork at the British Library and New York Public Library that convinced me to pursue an academic career.

I received my Ph.D from the Australian National University, working on theatre historiography within the English program. My research has continued in an interdisciplinary mode, bringing together areas such as Elizabethan performance, nineteenth-century cultural history and classical Hollywood cinema. My current research project is a wide-ranging study of actresses and mental illness, drawing on historical examples and literary and cultural representations to consider the intersections of andlsquo;hysteria' and the andlsquo;histrionic'.

I taught in the School of English, Journalism and European Languages at the University of Tasmania before joining Monash University in 2006. At Monash I have had the pleasure of introducing first-year students to the history of drama and performance. I have also taught units in Elizabethan performance, nineteenth-century literature, modern fiction and British comedy.