I joined The Open University in 2020 as a Lecturer in Drama and Performance Studies, specialising in early modern English theatre, c.1500-1700. Prior to coming to the OU, I gained my BA in theatre and psychology from Saint Michael's College (Colchester, Vermont) and completed my MLitt and PhD in theatre studies at the University of Glasgow. I have taught theatre and English literature at the University of Glasgow and the Scottish Universities' International Summer School. Outside of academia, I have served as a dramaturg for work performed at the Citizens Theatre (Glasgow) and the Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), and have written performance pieces staged at the Tron Theatre (Glasgow) and for the 2016 Shakespeare 400 Dream On! Festival.
My current research focuses on English literature, drama and theatre from the early modern period. My PhD thesis, 'Staging Madness: Representations of Madness on the Early Modern English Stage', examines how Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights portrayed mad characters and tropes and how these portrayals helped shape early modern understandings of madness. This project engages with the works of Shakespeare, John Webster, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker (among others).
This attention to madness has extended my research into the field of medical humanities, and I am currently undertaking research for an upcoming monograph on how discourses on disease and infection intersect with early modern English writing and theatrical practices.
I am a member of the OU Medieval and Early Modern Research Group (MEM) and The Centre for Research into Gender and Otherness in the Humanities (GOTH).
I welcome applications from PhD candidates proposing to undertake work on early modern English literature and performance.
I teach on the following modules:
I also serve as the postgraduate convenor for English Literature.
[Book review]: Sandra Young, Shakespeare in the Global South: Stories of Oceans Crossed in Contemporary Adaptation (2022-06)
Ziegler, Molly
Scottish Journal of Performance, 7(1) (pp. 99-103)
‘For Fear to Be Infect’: Reading the Female Body in Early Modern Revenge Drama (2021-03-15)
Ziegler, Molly
Journal of Early Modern Studies, 10 (pp. 249-268)