Research
My research interests and teaching expertise are in drama and theatre studies. Currently, my research centres around theatre in translation and women’s playwrighting. My PhD thesis proposed and examined strategies for feminist theatre translation, which I explored by translating Minna Canth’s The Worker’s Wife (1885) from Finnish to English. From 2023-2025, I held a Junior Research Fellowship in Drama at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford.
For the last year, I have been working on my book, Four Plays by Minna Canth: Experiments in Feminist Realism. This work has been funded by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation. In addition, I have been working on a new project researching and translating the plays of the early twentieth-century feminist-socialist Finnish playwright Elvira Willman, and a second book project on ‘staging solidarity’ in plays by British by women writers.
Beyond my own research, I love working collaboratively. In 2025, I participated in an interdisciplinary public engagement research project called ‘Making it Personal’, working with Dr Alison Kay and the Centre for Personalised Medicine to use theatre to explore genetics, risk and pregnancy. The same year, I collaborated with director Stephen Bailey on a series of workshops about theatre translation and disability. From 2025-6 I participated in an EU-funded research project carried out by the Oulu Writers’ Association (Finland) into the use of artificial intelligence in literary translation.
As a higher education teacher, I specialise in twentieth- and twenty-first century drama, and queer, feminist and political theatre. I have extensive experience of practical, studio-based classes, as well as lectures, seminars and tutorials.
I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Association.
Publications
“Pioneering Feminist Realism in Minna Canth’s Työmiehen Vaimo [The Worker’s Wife] (1885)”, Modern Drama vol.68 no.3 (2025)
“Can It Happen Again? Using Co-Produced Theatre to Explore the Challenges Faced by Couples Considering Pregnancy After a De Novo Genetic Diagnosis in a Child”, Health Expectations 29 (2026)
Four Plays by Minna Canth: Experiments in Feminist Reaslism (Forthcoming book)
Conference Papers
““Your laws and justice - that’s what I meant to shoot!”: The Revolutionary Drama of Minna Canth”, Oxford Scandinavian Studies Network, University of Oxford, February 2025. (Lecture)
“Staging the working-class city in Elvira Willman’s Kellarikerroksessa [The Basement Flats] (1907)”, European Association for the Studies of Theatre and Performance, Institute of the Arts Barcelona, October 2024.
“Political playwriting and precarity in early 20th century Finland: Elvira Willman’s Kellarikerroksessa [The Basement Flats] (1907)”, Theatre and Performance Research Association Annual Conference, University of Northumbria, September 2024.
“Translating turn-of-the-century sex work for the contemporary stage”, Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) discussion group, March 2024.
“Context and Feminist Translation: Minna Canth’s Työmiehen vaimo [The Worker’s Wife] (1885) from Finnish to English”, Theatre and Performance Research Association Annual Conference, University of Leeds, August 2023.
“Translating and Staging Historical Political Drama as Utopian Practice”, Worldmaking on Stage: Community-building in and through Theatre Translation, Out of the Wings, Kings College London, July 2023.
“Strategies for Feminist Theatre Translation: A Dramaturgical Toolkit”, Dimensions of Dramaturgy, European Association for the Studies of Theatre and Performance, Aarhus (Denmark), June 2023.
“Feminist Translation as Tapestry: The Worker’s Wife from Finnish to English”, Connections, School of Arts, University of Kent, June 2022.
Podcasts
‘Translator as Theatre-Maker: Dr Minna Jeffery on Feminist Theatre Translation,’ Cambridge Centre for International Research, August 2024.
Teaching
2025-present: Tutor, University of Oxford
Tutorials on Arthur Miller (St Anne’s College); tutorials on contemporary British and American drama (Exeter College); undergraduate dissertation supervision on contemporary drama.
2023-2025: Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford
Lecture series on modern and contemporary drama (English Faculty); undergraduate dissertation supervision on twentieth- and twenty-first century British theatre, class on language and gender, classes and tutorials on twentieth- and twenty-first century British drama (St Anne’s College); tutorials on queer theatre and twentieth- and twenty-first century drama (Wadham College).
2023: Assistant Lecturer, University of Kent.
Modules: Making Performance 2 (Undergraduate Year 1) and Sex, Gender and Performance: Beyond the Binary (Undergraduate Year 2). Both modules included a combination of lectures, text and theory-centred seminar-style teaching, and practical, studio-based workshops.
2020 – 2022: Graduate Teaching Assistant & Guest Lecturer, University of Kent.
Modules: Making Performance 1 (Undergraduate Year 1), Making Performance 2 (Undergraduate Year 1), Performing Lives: Biographical and Autobiographical Performance (Undergraduate Year 3). Guest Lecture on the history of feminism and feminist performance for Sex, Gender and Performance: Beyond the Binary (Undergraduate Year 2).
