Shakespeare Institute academic and research staff

Stratford Residential 2018 photo by Sam Allard c. RSC

Dr Hes Bradley

Dr Hes Bradley

Teaching Fellow

My specialisms are in John Lyly, Shakespeare, queer studies, creative-critical practice, community-based ecology, ecocriticism, and creative writing.

Dr Jessica Chiba

Dr Jessica Chiba

Assistant Professor

I’m a Shakespeare scholar because I’m fascinated by what the continued interest in Shakespeare can reveal about the kind of beings we are. Much of my research centres on philosophical issues raised by Shakespeare’s works, and especially ontological or epistemological questions about existence and knowledge.

My current research combines my philosophical interests and my work in ...

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

I’m interested in the life in Shakespeare and other literature, and in exploring the ways in which it can inform, enhance and challenge life now.   I'm also interested in the way standard critical forms (such as the essay and approved styles of critical prose) reveal but also limit the kind of experience reading is held to be, and I'm ...

Dr Chris Laoutaris

Dr Chris Laoutaris

Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare

I am a biographer, historian, poet, Shakespeare scholar and Associate Professor at The Shakespeare Institute in Shakespeare’s birthplace of Stratford-Upon-Avon. My specialisms include Shakespeare’s First Folio, the history of Shakespeare’s theatres, women’s history, Renaissance politics, the early modern body and medicine, Renaissance magic and witchcraft, and the history ...

Dr Abigail Rokison-Woodall

Dr Abigail Rokison-Woodall

Senior Lecturer in Shakespeare and Theatre
Deputy Director of Institute: Education

I joined the Shakespeare Institute in 2013, having been lecturing at Cambridge University for 7 years. I began my career as a professional 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.  I ...

Dr Simon Smith

Dr Simon Smith

Associate Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama

I’m an early modernist with particular interests in drama, music, playhouse culture, and historical sense-scapes. My most recent book is Musical Response in the Early Modern Playhouse, 1603-1625 (CUP, 2017; pbk edn 2018). 

Dr Robert Stagg

Dr Robert Stagg

Leverhulme Research Fellow

I am a Shakespearean and early modernist whose principal research interests are in literary form, ranging from versification (rhyme, metre, rhythm) to verse structures (blank verse, the sonnet).

Professor Tiffany Stern, FBA

Professor Tiffany Stern, FBA

Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama
Deputy Director of Institute: Research

My work combines literary criticism, theatre and book history and editing from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. I’m fascinated by the theatrical contexts that brought about plays by Shakespeare and others; several of my books and articles are on the theatrical documents put together by authors and theatrical personnel in the process of writing and learning a play: actors’ ...

Dr Erin Sullivan

Dr Erin Sullivan

Reader in Shakespeare

I am a cultural historian and literary scholar interested in the nature of emotional experience and its relation to art - in particular Shakespeare’s. My research splits into two distinct but nonetheless related strands: the cultural history of the emotions, especially sadness, and the performance of Shakespeare today.

Honorary Fellows

Associated members of the Department of English

Associated members of the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts

  • Russell Jackson, Emeritus Allardyce Nicoll Chair in Drama and Theatre Arts

Associated members of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

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

[Photo Credit: Sam Allard c. RSC]