Dr Hannah Simpson
Lecturer in Drama and Performance; LLC Deputy Director of Learning and Teaching; LLC QAE Director
- English Literature
- School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Contact details
- Email: h.e.a.simpson@ed.ac.uk
Availability
My office hour in Semester 2, 2026 is every Tuesday from 12.30 pm to 1.30 pm, in room 2.09, 50 George Square. There is no need to book to see me - just turn up and knock!
If you have any access issues that you'd like me to be aware of before coming to my office hour, please email me directly. All access information will be treated in confidence.
Background
Originally from Northern Ireland, I completed my BA at the University of Oxford (English Literature and French, St Hilda's College), my MA at Boston University (English and American Literature, with a minor in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies) and my PhD at the University of Oxford (English Literature, St Cross College). I was then the Rosemary Pountney Junior Research Fellow in British and European Drama (1890 to Present) at St Anne's College, University of Oxford, before joining the University of Edinburgh.
CV
139746.pdf
Undergraduate teaching
Contemporary British Drama
Illness and Disability in Modern and Contemporary Theatre
Medical Ethics in Literature
Time and Space of Performance
Critical Practice: Performance
Reading Theory
Literary Studies 1A (close-reading) and 2B (context)
Dissertation supervision (English Literature; Literature and Medicine; Anthropology and Sociology of Medicine)
Postgraduate teaching
Dissertation supervision (MSc in Literature and Modernity 1900-Present; MSc in Religion and Literature)
Literary Studies MscT Research Methods and Problems
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I welcome PhD project proposals in the areas of modern and contemporary theatre, the medical humanities and disability representation, trauma studies, sex studies, and in selected Francophone, Irish and Northern Irish literature.
Current PhD students supervised
I am currently supervising doctoral projects on:
- the definition and dramaturgical strategies of the #MeToo play (European Theatre Phd)
- the face in modernist literature (English Literature PhD)
- invisible disability and costume design (Art PhD)
Research summary
I work primarily on modern and contemporary theatre across the UK, US, Ireland and Northern Ireland, and Europe. I focus particularly on the representation of the human body on stage and on the overlap between theatre and politics. I have a special interest in the work of Samuel Beckett, depictions of physical pain and disability, depictions of sex and sexual assault, and popular culture.
I also work occasionally on modern and contemporary poetry, including on the work of W.B. Yeats and Leontia Flynn.
I am available for dramaturg, programme writing and theatre consultancy work, particularly with regards to i) Samuel Beckett's plays and ii) disability representation and audience access.
Recent Research Awards
David Bradby Monograph Award 2023, TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association), for "Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance", Palgrave Macmillan.
John N. Serio Award, best essay in The Wallace Stevens Journal, 2022, for “Wallace Stevens and the Necessity of Distance: International Influence and the Theatre Auditorium”, The Wallace Stevens Journal 46.1, 2022, 82-96.
Editorial Work
Co-editor with Ann M. Fox of the Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Disability book series, 2024-present: https://link.springer.com/series/17431. Please do get in touch if you'd like to discuss a book proposal for the series.
I serve on the editorial boards of the "Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui" journal and the "Samuel Beckett in Company" book series at Columbia University Press.
Project activity
Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Witness: Pain in Post-War Francophone Theatre (Oxford University Press, 2022)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/samuel-beckett-and-the-theatre-of-the-witness-9780192863263
Samuel Beckett and the Theatre of the Witness explores Beckett's representation of physical pain in his theatre plays in the long aftermath of World War II, emphasising how the issues raised by this staging of pain speak directly to matters lying at the heart of his work: the affective power of the human body; the doubtful capacity of language as a means of communication; the aesthetic and ethical functioning of the theatre medium; and the vexed question of intersubjective empathy. Alongside the wartime and post-war plays of fellow Francophone writers Albert Camus, Eugène Ionesco, Pablo Picasso, and Marguerite Duras, this study resituates Beckett's early plays in a new conceptualising of le théâtre du témoin or a 'theatre of the witness'.
Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-04133-4
Samuel Beckett’s plays have attracted a striking range of disability performances – that is, performances that cast disabled actors, regardless of whether their roles are explicitly described as ‘disabled’ in the text. Grounded in the history of disability performance of Beckett’s work and a new theorising of Beckett’s treatment of the impaired body, Samuel Beckett and Disability Performance examines four contemporary disability performances of Beckett’s plays, staged in the UK and US, and brings the rich fields of Beckett studies and disability studies into mutually illuminating conversation. Pairing original interviews with the actors and directors involved in these productions alongside critical analysis underpinned by recent disability and performance theory, this book explores how these productions emphasise or rework previously undetected indicators of disability in Beckett’s work. More broadly, it reveals how Beckett’s theatre compulsively interrogates alternative embodiments, unexpected forms of agency, and the extraordinary social interdependency of the human body.
I am currently working on two new book projects:
- a monograph tentatively entitled "The Unexpected Dramatist", which examines the forgotten stage plays of modernist writers who are more famous as novelists: Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, E.M. Forster, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner.
- a co-authored book on the history and current practice of Birds of Paradise, one of the world's pre-emininent disability-led theatre companies (https://www.boptheatre.co.uk/).
Selected recent article/chapter publications
“Sexual Assault and the Criminal Justice System: The Naked Female Body in Breach Theatre’s It’s True, It’s True, It’s True”, in Dramaturgy of Sex on Stage, Routledge, 2024.
“Decolonisation and the Theatre of the Absurd”, co-authored with Nic Barilar, in The Routledge Companion to Absurdist Literature, Routledge, 2024.
“Performing Northern Ireland after Brexit: Stephen Rea in David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue and Clare Dwyer Hogg’s Hard Border”, New Theatre Quarterly, 2023.
“Theatre in Northern Ireland Post-1989”, The Routledge Companion to European Theatre and Performance, Routledge, 2023.
“A Bodily Haunting: The Woman’s Wordless Scream on Samuel Beckett’s Stage”, in Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, 2023.
“Stuffed Bears and Canned Tuna: Staging Animal Extinction through the Material Prop”, coauthored with Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, in Theatre about Science, Coimbra University Press, 2023.
“Invoking Beckett: Samuel Beckett’s Legacy in Northern Irish Poetry”, Samuel Beckett’s Poetry, Cambridge University Press, 2022.
“‘in control… under control’: Not I, Sexual Trauma, and Rape Play”, in Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, 2022.
“Displacing the Human: Representing Ecological Crisis on Stage”, co-authored with Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, in Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance, 2022.
“Waiting for Godot and the Fascist Aesthetics of the Body” in Beckett and Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.
“Waiting for GOdoT: Samuel Beckett and HBO’s Game of Thrones” in Pop Beckett: Intersections with Popular Culture, Columbia University Press, 2019.
“Tics in the Theatre: The Quiet Audience, the Relaxed Performance, and the Neurodivergent Spectator”, in Theatre Topics, 2018.
“‘Away, come away’: Moving Dead Women and Irish Emigration in W. B. Yeats’s Early Poetry”, in Études Irlandaises, 2017.
In the press
Guardian article, "‘I’m done with pretenders’: Disabled Actors on Reclaiming Richard III", 30 January 2024. Available here.
Keynote address, “Beckett Unbound”, Beckett Festival, Liverpool, June 2024. Available here.
Times Radio speaker, “Times Radio Breakfast: On This Day” segment, anniversary of Samuel Beckett’s death, December 2022.
Guest speaker, “Let’s Relax! Relaxed Performance”, Positions podcast series, October 2023. Available here.
Guest speaker, “Disability-Led Theatre”, Practice Makes podcast series, October 2022. Available here.
Guest speaker, “Samuel Beckett and the Nobel Prize”, The Nobel Prize podcast series, May 2022. Available here.
Plenary roundtable, “Samuel Beckett’s Politics on Confinement”, Beckett Festival, Liverpool, May 2022.
Invited speaker, “World War II: Bodies Beyond the Battlefield”, Medical Humanities podcast, May 2020. Available here.
- "Autism Awarness in the University", University of Edinburgh, January 2026
- “Implementing Reasonable Adjustments for Staff”, University of Edinburgh, January 2024.
- SQA Introduction to British Sign Language, Deaf Action, August 2023-January 2024.
- “Sighted Guide Training”, Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, June 2023.
- “Challenging Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence”, UCU, February 2023.
- “Trans Awareness”, Gendered Intelligence, May 2022.
- “Doing Things Differently: Race, Literature, and Teaching”, University of Oxford, May 2022.
- “Flexible Inclusive Teaching”, University of Oxford, September 2021.