After a PhD at Lancaster University, Maggie taught at Milan University, where she held the chair of British Theatre Studies and Performance and still teaches the MA theatre studies programme. She has published in the areas of British contemporary drama and theatre, Shakespeare in performance and women’s studies.

Since the mid 1990s she has worked in Scotland and in Italy, as a writer, dramaturg and workshop leader, with well-known practitioners: Andy Arnold (the Arches and Tron), Graham Eatough (Oran Mor and Traverse), Carrie Cracknell (Traverse and a UK tour), Liz Lochhead (Casa degli Alfieri). She is a member of the Scottish Society of Playwrights and Scotland’s Playwrights Studio. Several of her stage and radio plays, focusing on Italian migration to Scotland, such as the co-written Walking Through Stones and Six Month Here Six Months There, have been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe, The Gateway (Edinburgh) and Soho Theatre (London). Her recent work, exploring gardens and the environment in Shakespeare’s plays, includes the site-specific, Shakespeare in a Herb Garden, A Walk in Shakespeare’s Garden, Ophelia, Herb Woman (see Youtube: Ofelia donna delle erbe), the last two directed by Donatella Massimilla of CETEC (Centro europeo teatro e carcere). She has led writing, performance and theatre translation workshops in major theatres, universities and prisons, such as the EU Lifelong Learning workshop, WWW.Venice. She co-led the three-year translation and performance workshop “Intercultural Dialogues”, with guest practitioners, Hanif Kureishi, Kwame Kwei-Armah, Rani Moorthy and Arne Pohlmeier, supported by British Council, Milan and Warwick Universities. She currently co-leads the Shakespeare Prison workshop at Milan’s “Cesare Beccaria” Juvenile Detention Centre, and citizens’ workshops organised by the association, P.E.R. Venezia Consapevole (Youtube: Paolo Puppa Mercato di Venezia). Her most recent play New Caliban, produced by Christine Cooper and performed by Matteo Francesconi, is in development in Scotland. She is President of English Theatre Milan.