Frances Gray

After short spells in the BBC , teaching, and a research MA on the playwright Giles Cooper I came to Sheffield as one of a new team recruited to develop theatre studies and have remained here ever since with short spells in Poland and the USA. I subsequently published books on John Arden and Noel Coward and several articles on radio. My main research in the past ten years has been in comedy,especially women's comedy, on which I published a book in 1994, and latterly in a new direction, that of crime writing, for which I developed an addiction during a snowy winter in Pennsylvania. I have just published a book which examines the way women write about crime, both real and fictional, and how they are written about. I had a valuable opportunity to bring all these interests together as resident playwright for Edge Hill Enterprises, a scheme backed by the European Social Fund, when I worked with a group of trainee actors and technicians to develop a play from Anne Imbrie's memoir of a friend murdered by a serial killer, Spoken in Darkness . For the last two years I have sat on the judging team for the Gold Dagger Awards for the best crime novel of the year.

I am also a playwright for stage and radio, with two awards for scriptwriting from the Radio Times. I currently teach a course on writing radio drama and have just launched a new undergraduate course on audio skills which will make it possible for students to acquire a package of broadcasting skills.

I have supervised PhDs on modern theatre, radio, comedy and African drama and I am especially interested in working with research students on women´s theatre, radio, comedy and the theatre of the early twentieth century. I am currently writing a biography of the actress Meggie Albanesi and produced a play about her, Basil, Meggie and the Most Beautiful Man in the World and would also be interested in any projects involving theatre and biography in the 1920s.

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