Dr Ella Hawkins

• PhD in Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
• MA in Shakespeare and Theatre, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
• BA in Theatre and Performance, University of Warwick

Ella Hawkins is a Shakespeare scholar, design historian and artist. As an undergraduate at the University of Warwick, she won the 2015 Theatre and Performance Studies Research Prize. Her PhD research on Elizabethan-inspired costume design for Shakespeare was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Ella joined the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 2023 as Senior Lecturer in Research and Innovation (Drama) and is responsible for leading the College's research activity in drama.

Ella shares her fascination with design by collaborating with arts and heritage organisations, and by creating edible art inspired by historical textiles, objects and costumes. She has worked with the British Library, London Museum, Milton’s Cottage, Jane Austen’s House, David Parr House, The Museum of English Rural Life, Reading Museum, Crawford Art Gallery and Leighton House on various biscuit art projects. She’s collaborated with the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Dash Arts on projects relating to Shakespeare and theatre history.

Ella's research focuses primarily on design for Shakespeare. Her first book, Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume (Bloomsbury, 2022), was developed from her PhD thesis, and examines how the clothing of Shakespeare's lifetime is recycled and reimagined by theatre practitioners in contemporary costume design.

The book combines practical knowledge of costume construction processes with original interview material, textual analysis, historical evidence and critical frameworks drawn from various fields (such as theories of experimental archaeology, cultural tourism, fairy tale and hauntology) to establish how individual costumes interact with broad cultural narratives.

Ella has also published on the evolving cultural and dramatic significance of the Elizabethan ruff, on Paul Tazewell's costume design for the musical Hamilton and on 17th-century festival books.

Ella is now working on a new research project about the creation and circulation of playing attire, properties and furniture in early modern London.

Within RWCMD, Ella teaches on the contextual history of early modern drama and on research skills. She also gives regular lectures, seminars and dress demonstrations beyond the College on design history, costuming practices and Shakespeare.

Ella is keen to hear from prospective doctoral research students interested in the history of Shakespeare in performance; Shakespeare in contemporary performance; design for performance; dress history; early modern performance practice; and theatre history more generally.

Book

• Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume: ‘Period Dress’ in Twenty-First-Century Performance (Bloomsbury [The Arden Shakespeare], 2022).

Journal articles

• One British Archive: Creating an Edible Archive, Journal of British Studies, 64 (2025): e5.
  
  
• The ‘Shakespearean’ Ruff, Shakespeare Bulletin, 39.2 (2021): 191–213.

Book chapters

• Telling the story of Hamilton in the twenty-first century: the layering of historical and modern aesthetics through costume design, in Dueling Grounds: Revolution and Revelation in the Musical Hamilton, ed. by Mary Jo Lodge and Paul Laird (Oxford University Press, 2021), 164–80.
  
  
• Appendix 1: A True Discourse, the principal English festival book of the 1625 wedding, including two addresses at Canterbury by John Finch (Transcribed and annotated), in The Wedding of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, 1625. Celebrations and Controversy, ed. by Marie-Claude Canova-Green and Sara Wolfson (Brepols, 2020), 321–42.

Reviews

• The Winter’s Tale, presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company on BBC4’, Shakespeare Bulletin, 39.4 (2022): 704­–8.
  
  
• Book Review: Richard II: A Critical Reader by Michael Davies & Andrew Duxfield, Cahiers Élisabéthains, 106.1 (2021): 134–6.
  
  
• The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Justin Audibert, Shakespeare Bulletin, 38.1 (2020): 156–60.
  
  
• The Tempest, directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company, designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis, Studies in Costume & Performance, 2.2 (2017): 171–4.