Dr Alys Daroy (full name Hana Mary Alīse Walsh-Daroja) is an Australian artist and academic. She was raised on Kaurna Country, South Australia, and Cammeraygal Country, NSW. Alys is of Latvian and Czech descent shaped by displacement following occupation. These histories continue to inform her research and creative practice, particularly cultural-ecological knowledge systems and harnessing the biophilic arts for environmental justice and biodiversity conservation.

 

Prior to academia, Alys worked as an actor in London and Sydney. Classical credits include the titular roles of Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Margarita (in the Master and Margarita), amongst multiple others. Alys received a UK Royal National Theatre and Sunday Times Ian Charleson Award Commendation for Classical Acting for her role as Yelena in Chekhov's The Wood Demon. She specialises in Shakespearean performance, and has played leading roles in over a dozen professional Shakespeare productions. She has worked for the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival, Bard on the Beach, Shakespeare's Globe, RSC Open Stages, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Heartstring, Shakespeare by the Sea and various others, before establishing Shakespeare South on Kaurna Country, Adelaide, in 2021, and Whadjuk Noongar boodjar, WA, in 2023. Shakespeare South was subsequently featured as one of thirteen national exemplars of ecological theatre in Australia's Culture for Climate Report. Screen work includes for BBC UKTV, Discovery Channel, Network 7 and others. 

 

As an academic, her books include Shakespeare, Ecology and Adaptation (co-authored with Paul Prescott for Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2025) and Sydney’s Food Landscapes: Agriculture, Planning, Sustainability (with Joshua Zeunert for Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). Traditional research includes for Stanislavski Studies, Performance Research, RiDE and others and contributed chapters to Critical Approaches to the Australian Blue Humanities (Routledge, 2024, edited by Maxine Newlands and Claire Hansen) and Woke Shakespeare (Birmingham Academic, 2024). Alys is currently writing Biophlic Shakespeare: Rewilding Ecocriticism and Ecoperformance (contracted to Routledge). She was awarded a S. Ernest Sprott Fellowship from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne (2025–2026) and is undertaking research as a Visiting Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe and the Shakespeare Institute (University of Birmingham). 

 

Currently creative projects include IL VENTO, an ecological adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which was was selected by the International Shakespeare Association and Conservatorio di Verona for performance at the World Shakespeare Congress (July, 2026). Other creative works include “InGrained” at Transversal Exhibition, Form Gallery WA (2025), “Anthropoiesis” at the European Cultural Centre's Time, Space, Existence exhibition at the Venice Biennial for the Venice Biennale (2023), Botanica Lumina: Twelfth Night for Shakespeare South and the Botanic Garden and State Herbarium of South Australia and Opus Beethoven, with the Australian Piano Quartet for Phoenix Arts. 

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She is Academic Chair of Theatre and Creative Production at Murdoch University (recipient of the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Research Excellence Award 2025) and an Affiliate Researcher at multidisciplinary research centre Gloknos: The Centre for Global Knowledge Systems established at the University of Cambridge CRASSH by Professor Innana Hamati-Ataya.