Abbie Longmate

My Collaborative Doctoral Award is a partnership with the UK’s National Trust and the University of Oxford. My research has been generously funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)'s Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership scholarship and the Clarendon Fund at the University of Oxford. I will be supervised by Professor Sos Eltis and Professor Rebecca Beasley at the University of Oxford, and by Susannah Mayor and Rowena Willard-Wright at the National Trust.

Broadly, I will be exploring the lives of the female communities and networks who resided at and visited National Trust's Smallhythe Place between 1880-1947; specifically, I'll be examining how political thought and activism informed their collaborative theatre-making practices. My focus will be on the life and practices of Edith Craig (daughter of infamous Victorian actress Ellen Terry), who is often overlooked in theatre history narratives. My research is particularly interested in Craig’s opening of both a museum (The Ellen Terry museum) and theatre (The Ellen Terry Barn Theatre) in her mother’s memory at Smallhythe Place.

Prior to starting my doctoral studies, I worked as a Researcher at an arts and culture audience research agency, collaborating with clients such as the National Trust, Brooklyn Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) to help them better engage and understand their audiences. I hope to use the experience I’ve gained in the arts, culture and heritage sectors to explore how we can best display the lives of Smallhythe Place’s female theatrical networks so that their legacies can be most potently remembered and celebrated.