Ellen Donkin, professor emerita of theatre, holds a B.A. in drama from Middlebury College, an M.A. in English from the Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College, and a Ph.D. in theatre history from the University of Washington. She has taught in the drama department of Franklin and Marshall College and at the University of Washington.
Her special areas of interest are playwriting and gender issues in theatre history and theatre practice. She is the co-editor of Upstaging Big Daddy: Directing Theatre as if Race and Gender Matter (1993), and the author of Getting Into the Act: Women Playwrights in London, 1776-1829 (1995). She co-edited Women and Playwriting in Nineteenth Century Britain (1999).
She currently chairs the Barnard Hewitt Award for Excellence in Theatre Research for the American Society of Theatre Research.