Sarah’s broad research interests are in addressing the impact of silencing and erasure on theatre texts by, for and about marginalised groups. Some specific areas of focus include:
- Sapphic silencing and erasure within the Australian playwriting canon
- Erotohistoriographic re-visioning as a method for playwrights to restore gaps in sapphic canon
- Neuroqueer and autie-ethnographic research in theatre
- Neuroqueer autistic dramaturgical approaches to playwriting
- Queer and Neuroqueer approaches to time
Sarah is a researcher comfortable with both traditional and practice-led research methods. As part of her PhD studies, Sarah sought and undertook training in research co-design, interdisciplinary research, and non-traditional research outputs. Her additional background in computer science and statistics make her a versatile researcher who can communicate effectively across disciplines.
Some of her non-traditional and mixed-discipline research contributions include:
- Her practice-led PhD thesis, which combined textual analysis, semi-structured interviews, rehearsal observation, and the writing of a full-length play.
- Serving, via the University of Queensland’s Global Change Scholars Program, on an interdisciplinary team reviewing and creating a report on Queensland Theatre Company’s flood preparedness planning.
- Acting as a research assistant for the University of Sydney’s 2023 Eurovision Hackathon. This was a one-day event, jointly organised by the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARC) and the Computational Social Science Lab, which brought together researchers from five Australian universities to investigate the social, cultural, and political aspects of the Eurovision Song Contest using scraped digital trace data from Twitter.
