Academic and research staff

Photograph of an academic at the Shakespeare Institute

Professor Michael Dobson

Professor Michael Dobson

Director of the Shakespeare Institute; Professor of Shakespeare Studies

Like his own Falstaff, Shakespeare is not only witty in himself but is the cause that wit is in others. My career as a teacher of and writer about Shakespeare’s plays and poems has been devoted not just to examining these extraordinary writings in their sixteenth- and seventeenth-century contexts, but to exploring how they have stimulated and enabled the creativity of other people, ...

Professor Ewan Fernie

Professor Ewan Fernie

Chair of Shakespeare Studies and Fellow

As a critic, I'm about opening up and analysing the life there is in Shakespeare and other literature. This involves thinking about the ways verbal and dramatic art constitute sensuous, erotic, ethical and even spiritual experience. 

The latter, as a literary aim and effect, has been a particular preoccupation. I'm also interested ...

Dr Tara Hamling

Dr Tara Hamling

Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History

I joined Birmingham in 2007 as RCUK / Roberts Research Fellow in the History Department. I teach a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, although from 2011-2013 I'm on Leverhulme-funded research leave. I'm currently based off-campus, at the Shakespeare Institute in the historic town of Stratford-upon-Avon. I’m a member of the Centre for Reformation ...

David Hopes

David Hopes

Research Fellow

I’m researching ways of making the collections and expertise held by the Shakespeare Institute and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust more accessible and more joined-up.

Professor John Jowett

Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Deputy Director of The Shakespeare Institute

My teaching and research focuses mainly on Shakespeare and early modern drama, with particular reference to editing and all areas of textual study. 

Dr Chris Laoutaris

Dr Chris Laoutaris

Birmingham Fellow

I joined the Shakespeare Institute in 2013, having been awarded a Birmingham Fellowship in order to conduct research for Team Shakespeare: The First Folio and the Men who Created the Shakespeare Legacy. Between 2010 and 2012 I was Renaissance Literature Course Convenor at University College London, where I had been lecturing in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature since 2007. While at ...

Dr Abigail Rokison

Dr Abigail Rokison

Lecturer

I am delighted to be joining the Shakespeare Institute this year. I began my career as an actor, training at LAMDA and working quite extensively in theatre. Since deciding to move into academia my main research interests have been in the field of Shakespeare in performance, in particular verse speaking, adaptation and theatre history.

Dr Erin Sullivan

Dr Erin Sullivan

Lecturer, Fellow and Shakespeare Institute Distance Learning Coordinator

I am a cultural historian and literary scholar interested in the relationship between identity, culture, and artistic expression. My primary focus is on Shakespeare and other renaissance literature and the ways in which this writing engages with contemporary religious, scientific, and philosophical ideas about what it means to be a living, feeling, and thinking human being.

Dr Martin Wiggins

Dr Martin Wiggins

Associated members of the Department of English

Associated members of the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts

Associated members of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

  • Robert Bearman, Retired Head of Archives and Local Studies, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Honorary Fellows

  • Stanley Wells, Emeritus Professor and Chairman of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
  • Professor Kate McLuskie
  • Greg Doran, Honorary Senior Research Fellow
  • Catherine Alexander, Honorary Research Fellow
  • Dr A Lindley, Honorary Research Fellow
  • Mr K Branagh, Honorary Research Fellow
  • Paul Edmondson, Head of Education at The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
  • Dr Robert Smallwood
  • Robert Wilcher, Honorary Senior Fellow of the Department of English and Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham.
  • Dr R Wilcher
  • Ms Vivien Heilbron
  • Susan Brock, Administrator of the CAPITAL Centre at the University of Warwick