CMNH is delighted to announce that Ailsa Grant Ferguson will be co-leading the Centre with Deborah Madden.

Ailsa’s post as co-lead will take place from 3 January 2023. Dr Ailsa Grant Ferguson is a Principal Lecturer in Literature at University of Brighton and is currently an AHRC Research, Development and Engagement Fellow (2022-3). She is PI on ‘Susanna Hall & Hall’s Croft: Gender, Cultural Memory & Heritage’, a major project to redefine how we interact with early modern women working closely with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council,). She previously held roles at the National Theatre and King’s College London and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Widely published on Shakespeare and war, cultural memory, literary commemoration, gender and performance, as well as early modern women’s writing, her authored books include The Shakespeare Hut: A Story of Memory, Performance and Identity, 1916-23 (Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury, 2019), Shakespeare, Cinema, Counterculture (Routledge, 2016) and, co-written with Kate Aughterson,  Shakespeare and Gender (Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury, 2020).

On her new role in prospect, Ailsa said that she was ‘thrilled to have been appointed as Co-Director of CMNH and can’t wait to work with Deborah to co-lead the Centre at such an exciting time! Having joined the CORE as soon as I arrived at Brighton back in 2014, I know just how special it is, both as a community and as a research centre, so I look forward to playing a new part in helping it to continue to thrive and develop’.

A very warm welcome to Ailsa on behalf of CMNH – we also look forward to seeing how her research expertise and interests will start to collaboratively shape key areas in the Centre.