About me
Dr Alys Daroy is Academic Chair of Theatre and Creative Production and Lecturer in English and Theatre. Her research and creative practice form a sustained program in the environmental humanities and ecological arts, with a particular focus on Shakespeare, cognition, and climate-responsive performance. Books: Shakespeare, Ecology and Adaptation: A Practical Guide (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2025, with Paul Prescott) and Sydney’s Food Landscapes: Agriculture, Planning, Sustainability (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025, with Joshua Zeunert). Her forthcoming monograph, Biophilic Eco-Shakespeare: How Shakespeare ‘Rewilds’ the Brain (Routledge, 2027), develops a cognitive-ecological framework for understanding early modern theatre and audience perception. She is an External Researcher at the Centre for People, Place and Planet (ECU) and an Affiliate Researcher at the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies (gloknos), University of Cambridge.
Alys’ creative research translates this scholarship into practice through historically informed and ecologically engaged performance. Current projects include A Planet of Sound and Fury, a Shakespearean eco-adaptation with an original score developed in collaboration with the Conservatorio di Verona. Her research is currently supported by the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts S. Ernest Sprott Fellowship. Alys is undertaking archival and practice-based research into sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theatre as a Visiting Fellow of Shakespeare's Globe, London and the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, examining how audience perception of pattern, materiality, and form interacts with Shakespeare’s ecological poetics and early modern playhouse architecture.
Alys provides research supervision across Honours, Masters, and PhD levels in literature, performance, and the environmental arts. In Semester 1, 2026, she is Unit Coordinator and Lecturer for EGL101 Theatre Elements: History and Performance, EGL214 Acting for Stage and Screen, and EGL231 Poetry as Performance: From Sonnet to Slam. Prospective students are welcome to contact her at alys.daroy@murdoch.edu.au.