Caminey Kuropatwa

Shakespeare Institute
Doctoral researcher

Contact details

PhD title: Imagining mixedness: interracial identities and cultural negotiation in Early Modern English drama
Supervisors: Dr Simon Smith and Dr Erin Sullivan
PhD Shakespeare Studies

Qualifications

  • MA in Shakespeare Studies from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, Distinction
  • BA in English Literature from the University of London, First Class Hons
  • LLB in Law from The London School of Economics and Political Science, Upper Second

Biography

My doctoral research is supported by a Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship in Humanities. Prior to beginning my PhD, I undertook my MA as a distance-learner, during which I received the Sir Stanley Wells Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Work for my MA dissertation.

Alongside my studies, I am a secondary-school English teacher, and a choir coach. I was also a trustee for a philanthropic organisation, The JDI Foundation, for over twenty years, working to support disadvantaged communities in South Africa through sustainable and tangible grassroots volunteering.

Research

My research examines the articulation of interracialism and mixedness in early modern drama scrutinising the depiction of racial, religious, and cultural mixing, and the relationship between these representations and the construction of ‘race’ in the early modern period. By using archival records and early modern writings to further explicate how interracialism was being received and experienced in England at this time, and exploring these cultural negotiations through the lens of early modern drama, my research aims to develop new insights into historical and contemporary understandings of mixedness and interracialism, addressing historic and persistent binary attitudes to racial identity.

Publications

'Parti-Coloured Lambs': Constructions of Mixedness and Interracial Imaginings in The Merchant of Venice in The Shakespearean International Yearbook: Mixed Race Studies ed. Alexa Alice Joubin, Lisa S. Starks, Adele Lee, Routledge (forthcoming, 2026)