I am currently a Senior Research Fellow for the research project Local Theatres: Participation, Inclusion, Imagination (September 2024-November 2026). Funded by the AHRC, this research will investigate the contribution theatres make to their local communities, and how theatre-making might contribute to re-imagining an expanded idea of 'the local'. 

I am a cultural geographer with research interests in the arts. My research has explored the cultural geographies of amateur creativity, including the spaces, materialities, and creative processes of backstage theatre-makers, specifically set-builders. Backstage spaces have been a recurring theme throughout my research - both in theatres and museums. 

Before my current post, I was an Andrew W. Mellon research fellow at the V&A Research Institute (VARI), working on the project Show+Tell+Share (2018-2022). Here my research explored object-person encounters in museum storage through the idea of serendipity. I was also a postdoctoral researcher for Civic Theatres: A Place for Towns (2021-2022), funded by the AHRC. Theatre in Towns (2023) - a co-authored book with Helen Nichsolson, Jenny Hughes, and Gemma Edwards - can be downloaded here: Theatre in Towns | Helen Nicholson, Jenny Hughes, Gemma Edwards, Cara (taylorfrancis.com). 

I gained my PhD from the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at Royal Holloway, University of London with my thesis titled A Study of Amateur Theatre: Making and Making-Do (2018). This interdisciplinary study analysed amateur dramatics as a craft and creative practice, placing focus on the people involved in backstage roles as set builders, set designers and costume-makers and foregrounded the backstage work that happens before, after and around a performance rather than the performance itself. My PhD contributed to the wider project Amateur Dramatics: Crafting Communities in Time and Space which was funded under the AHRC Connected Communities Scheme.

I hold a BA(Hons) in Human Geography from the University of Exeter (2010) and an MA in Cultural Geography from Royal Holloway, University of London (2012).