Dr Hilary Baxter is an academic, theatre-maker and post-doctoral researcher. She recently completed her PhD in Scenography and Healthcare from the Drama department at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, which incorporates drama school training into a university structure. Her full-time PhD studentship was the first Theatre cross-disciplinary practice- based research project at St Marys and was founded in her professional practice as a Theatre Designer. Some of her research findings were published as evidence in the UK Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee's inquiry, ‘Menopause and the workplace’ in Autumn 2021.

She was previously the Programme Director for Theatre & Screen at Wimbledon College of Art, UAL, consisting of five specialist undergraduate pathways, and two MA courses. She was pathway leader of the two BA (Hons) Costume pathways. She has an extensive teaching practice and has been a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) since 2004. She was previously an External Examiner for the Arts University Bournemouth, amongst other institutions. For the Costume pathways at Wimbledon, she developed a series of public costume parades showing student costume project work, linked to specific public collections. This series started in May 2009 with four costume shows at The National Gallery, followed by shows at Kensington Palace, Hampton Court, The Soane Banquet at the Banqueting House, The Queens Gallery and finally Windsor Castle in 2015.

Her professional production work includes theatre design commissions for the RSC (The Other Place), NT (Cottesloe), National Theatre (Iceland), The Riksteatret (Norway), Lyceum (Edinburgh Festival), Crucible Theatre (Sheffield), Riverside Studios and Croydon Warehouse. She designed the first production of Arnold Wesker’s play The Mistress for the Teatro Flaiano in Rome, directed by the author. She has designed for dance and opera, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and other fringe productions, community plays, youth theatres, music videos, short films and TV productions.

Hilary Baxter has a track record of securing research funding. Her most recent research is focussed on the invisibility of the mid-life (menopausal) woman in everyday culture, but previous interests include ‘show’ costumes, specifically masques, showgirls, drag queens and different aspects of contemporary theatre practice: ethnography-based, immersive, site-specific, site-responsive, sensory.