The Shakespeare Institute is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Abigail Rokison as Lecturer in Shakespeare and Theatre as of January 1st 2013. Dr Rokison, currently Director of Undergraduate Studies in Drama at Homerton College, Cambridge, recently won the inaugural Shakespeare’s Globe Award for the Best First Book on the Shakespearean Theatre for her monograph Shakespearean Verse Speaking: Text and Theatre Practice (Cambridge, 2009).

Abigail Rokison

Part of her prize is the opportunity to give a Thursday afternoon seminar paper at the Shakespeare Institute in spring 2013, and the fellows and students of the Institute are delighted that she will now be doing so not as a guest but as a colleague.

Dr Rokison’s second book, Young People’s Shakespeare, will be appearing from Arden next year. She is well known to Shakespearean scholars as one of the moving spirits of the British Shakespeare Association over the last decade, and she is still well-known to a wider constituency for her portrayal of Primrose Larkin in the television series The Darling Buds of May (1991-3). 

With considerable experience of classical theatre work as well as popular television, a diploma in acting from LAMDA, an undergraduate degree from the Open University, an MA in Shakespeare, Text and Playhouse from King’s College, London and a PhD from Cambridge, Dr Rokison is perfectly equipped to take over a share in the Institute’s new, conservatory-oriented ‘Shakespeare and Creativity’ courses from her distinguished predecessor Dr Jaq Bessell, who will be moving to the Guildford School of Drama in December. ‘We’re thrilled to have been able to make such a stellar appointment,’ commented the Institute’s director Michael Dobson. ‘We just have to hope that the RSC doesn’t poach her away once she comes to Stratford by offering her Viola or Cleopatra.’