25/07/2026
Delighted to have finally graduated from my PhD after five long years of energy, curiosity, loneliness, resilience, critical thinking and challenging my preconceptions.
To have done so not on some random PhD topic, but on something so close to my heat and what PurpleDoor has aimed to recognise is something I am immensely proud of. My PhD is a call to theatres, policy makers and the academy to recognise and give proper legitimacy to the wealth of work outside of the theatre mainstream, whether we call it fringe, student, non-professional or unpaid, by recognising that many people are in this space by circumstance, not by choice, and that there is something unique in how this work is created, who gets to do it, and how it meets community and audiences, which aught to be elevated. Fringe is not just professional waiting to happen.
I self funded this PhD, which means I will be paying for it for the rest of my life. But to have started this journey to recognise the type of work PurpleDoor and so many others makes is worth it.
Whether presenting at the LGA Annual Conference at the start of July, submitting my chapter for the upcoming 'Shakespeare and Stanislavski' book, or working with Tour de France as it comes to the UK, I cant wait to see how this develops and what's next.
Why Royal Holloway? I knew there was only one person I wanted to go on this adventure with. To have worked so closely with Professor Helen Nicholson, the godmother of applied theatre, is an experience I will forever be grateful for and a partnership I know will continue.
Over five years Ive faced personal challenges in the background to this that I would never wish on anybody. Some so private only my cat knows about them. And I have worked full or part time throughout, despite the formal academic advice, working constantly in my spare time. It has not been an easy ride, one which saw me start a lot of therapy since, something that has changed my life in its own way.
Not bad coming from a single income household, growing up in a council estate and spending most of my time at school being bullied and, on more than one occasion physically spat on for being a "swat". Here's to all that 🙏
