Paul Murphy is a scholar of theatre and performance whose wide-ranging research interests include historiography, social and economic inequality, simulation-based education in healthcare and social care, and arts-based interventions for public health. His monograph Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama (Palgrave, 2008) engages with class and gender hierarchies in the Irish context in the first half of  the Twentieth Century. Theatre and Class (Bloomsbury, 2024) examines the evolution of class on stage and in the public sphere from the late Nineteenth to the late Twentieth Centuries. He is currently working on a monograph exploring the notion of class as performance on stage and in society in the British context over the last three centuries. He is also working on the authorised biography of playwright Brian Friel.

Paul has built upon an established record of traditional, solo-authored research on dramatic art by engaging in what one would broadly describe as applied drama and more socially engaged and impact-oriented research activities leading to ground-breaking, interdisciplinary scholarship in two main areas:

simulation-based education for healthcare and social care resulting in multi-authored articles in leading journals including Advances in Simulation, Medical Education and Social Work Education;

arts-based interventions for good health and well-being typified in the Heritage Fund supported project Friel Reimagined which involved engaging socially and economically challenged communities with cultural heritage.

Paul has a strong commitment to academic research that leads to outcomes that can serve as a catalyst to help people embrace their own creativity and enhance their health and well-being.

Paul served as a Specialist Adviser for arts and health research to REF 2021 Sub-panel 33.