Wendy Lennon

Wendy Lennon

Shakespeare Institute
Doctoral Researcher

Contact details

PhD title: From Shakespeare to the Windrush
Supervisor: Dr Chris Laoutaris and Professor Michael Dobson
PhD Shakespeare Studies

Qualifications

  • BA (Hons) English, Royal Holloway University of London
  • Secondary English PGCE, University of Exeter

Biography

Wendy Lennon is a doctoral researcher at the Shakespeare Institute working across history, literature and race. Her first academic book, 'Shakespeare, Race & Pedagogy: Early Modern Colonialism to the Windrush' is to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2023 and she has a chapter titled ‘Skin/Pedagogy’ forthcoming in an Arden Bloomsbury collection. Lennon is a speaker and teacher trainer for Penguin Random House's Lit in Colour programme. She is a member of the BSA’s education committee, a Fellow of the English Association and is on the editorial board for the journal English. The international ‘Shakespeare, Race & Pedagogy’ education initiative was founded by Wendy in 2019, and she project managed an ERC funded program at the University of Oxford which received the 2022 Vice-Chancellor’s Innovation and Engagement award. Following her undergraduate English degree at Royal Holloway, University of London and University of Exeter PGCE, Wendy was an English teacher for over a decade.  Wendy Lennon was delighted to be one of six writers chosen for the 2022-2023 Madeleine Milburn mentorship programme .  Wendy is represented by a Literary, TV & Film agent. Inspired by her mother’s Windrush migration, her academic work, her mixed-race heritage and childhood, Lennon is developing a nonfiction book and a narrative nonfiction work exploring Shakespeare and race.

Teaching

Wendy Lennon regularly gives lectures to academics as well as university and school students.  Lennon is the founder and director of her education initiative Shakespeare, Race & Pedagogy. Wendy is also an educator and has worked in schools for over a decade.  Over the last ten years she has held posts and additional responsibilities including: KS3 - KS5 English teacher; Head of English and Modern Foreign Languages Faculty; Deputy Head of English; whole school Literacy Coordinator; and GCSE examiner.  Wendy is also a FutureLearn educator with over 4,500 students.