Dr Eleanor K Rycroft

I am a theatre historian of early English and Scottish drama, whose research often involves practical explorations of early modern plays. I was a pioneer in the field of early modern PaR, working on major collaborative projects that staged theatre in the historic sites of Hampton Court, Stirling Castle, Linlithgow Palace, and Lancaster Castle, including the AHRC-funded 'Staging the Henrician Court' and 'Staging and Representing the Scottish Renaissance Court'.

I have a special interest in gender and its relationship to ideologies of manhood during the period. My monograph - Facial Hair and the Performance of Early Modern Masculinity (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama, Routledge, 2019) - concerns the role of beards in the construction of masculinities on the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century stage.

My current research project investigates the staging of walking in early modern theatre. This study has led to several contemporary-facing projects, including the Brigstow-funded 'Walking and Re-Creation' and 'Nightwalker', as well as the AHRC and ESRC Impact Acceleration projects, 'Women, Walking and Performance' and 'Walking with Toddlers'. As part of this research, which traces a long history of women's walking, we produced the award-winning soundscape, 'Night-Walk'.

My work has appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals such as Medieval English Theatre, Early Theatre, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Survey, London Journal, Journal of the Northern Renaissance and Shakespeare Bulletin, and has been published by Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury, Palgrave, Wiley-Blackwell, and Ashgate. I have written on material cultures and spatial practices of the early modern stage, hair and beards in travel literature, theatre at the court of Henry VIII, early Tudor and Stewart drama, practice-based research as a research methodology, women walking in Shakespeare, and the historical performance of witchcraft.