International collaborations with the Shakespeare Institute
To be a Shakespeare Institute student – whether on site or via our distance learning programmes – is to be at the centre of global networks in Shakespearean studies.
The Institute offers an environment in which students and staff are encouraged to be creative. We want to bring the directors, actors, writers, arts administrators and teachers as well as the academics of the future to Stratford. We want to bring Shakespeare to life in new ways in the here-and-now across the world. We have extensive international collaborations with institutions such as Waseda University in Japan and Nanjing University in China as well as Shakespeare-focussed organizations across Europe and North America.
All Party Parliamentary Group on Shakespeare
All Party Parliamentary Group on Shakespeare
The Shakespeare Centre, China, at Nanjing
The Shakespeare Centre, China, at Nanjing
Waseda University, Tokyo
Waseda University, Tokyo
The National University of Singapore
The National University of Singapore
NUS is the home of the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive, of which Professor Michael Dobson is a member of the Editorial Board and Dr Jessica Chiba a member of the editorial team. In collaboration with both NUS and A|S|I|A, the Institute now co-teaches a pioneering online MA module, ‘Performing Shakespeare in Asia,’ co-led by Professor Li Lan Yong and Professor Michael Dobson.
Nanyang University
Nanyang University
Shakespeare Institute faculty are collaborating with Singapore-based digital animator Hans Martin Rall to produce a series of animated films and VR experiences based on Shakespeare, many of them with South-East Asian aesthetics.
The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
Closely linked with the University of Birmingham through the ‘Second Cities’ network, UIUC is collaborating with the Shakespeare Institute on ways of digitizing Shakespearean performance. A shared roundtable discussion and workshop, involving students and faculty from both institutions, took place in autumn 2022, with follow-up activities on the UIUC campus during visits by Professor Michael Dobson in November 2024 and Dr Erin Sullivan in spring 2025.
The University of Verona
The University of Verona
The Shakespeare Institute is a partner in the University of Verona’s Shakespeare and the Mediterranean Summer School and its simultaneous Verona Shakespeare Fringe Festival. All Shakespeare Institute students can enrol for the course at half the normal price.
Saheed Benazir Women’s University, Peshawar
Saheed Benazir Women’s University, Peshawar
L'Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l'âge Classique et les Lumières, Montpellier
L'Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l'âge Classique et les Lumières, Montpellier
The IRCL developed from the Renaissance Studies Institute founded at Paul Valery University in Montpellier by the late Jean-Marie Maguin, who spent a year at the Shakespeare Institute in the early 1970s and realized that France needed an equivalent. The IRCL even holds its weekly guest seminars on Thursdays in emulation of the Institute, and as of 2022 the Institute and the IRCL will now share at least one Thursday seminar per year via Zoom.
Elsewhere in France, the Institute sends two postgraduate students every spring to run two days of theatre workshops at L'Institut Catholique d'Études Supérieures (ICES, Catholic Institute of Higher Studies), in La Roche sur Yon.
The German Shakespeare Library in Munich (das Forschungsbibliothek Shakespeare Muenchen)
The German Shakespeare Library in Munich (das Forschungsbibliothek Shakespeare Muenchen)
The Shakespeare Institute was instrumental in the setting-up of Germany’s specialist Shakespeare library in 1964, and continues to work closely with its collections and personnel: Dr Simon Smith enjoyed a residency there while studying German stage productions of Twelfth Night in 2024. Its Director, Professor Claudia Olk of Ludwig Maximilian University, is working with the Institute, the German government and the APPG on the proposal to have the works of Shakespeare listed by UNESCO as part of the world’s intangible cultural heritage. She has also contributed to the Shakespeare Institute’s MA module on the reception of Shakespeare worldwide, ‘Shakespeare’s World/The World’s Shakespeares.’