Dr Will Sharpe BA MA PhD

Photograph of Dr Will Sharpe

Department of English Literature
Teaching Fellow in Shakespeare

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 3731
Email
w.sharpe@bham.ac.uk
Twitter
@drwillsharpe
Address
Arts Building
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

My teaching and research interests focus on the early modern period, and Shakespeare in particular, chiefly, in my research, on the textual editing and collaborative authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.

Qualifications

MA (Shakespeare Studies), PhD - University of Birmingham

Teaching

This year I am teaching on:

  • Shakespeare’s Afterlives (third-year)
  • Shakespeare’s Craftsmanship (MA, convenor)
  • Shakespeare: Elizabethan and Jacobean (second-year, convenor)
  • Shakespeare’s Theatre (MA, convenor)

Postgraduate supervision

Currently supervising MA dissertations at the Shakespeare Institute.

Find out more - our PhD English Literature  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Other activities

Selected conference papers and plenaries

  • Invited speaker to The University of Melbourne's event Beyond 400: New Shakespeares (fully funded), November 2016.
  • Invited speaker to the Stratford, Ontario Shakespeare Festival (fully funded). Lectured on the William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays volume with Professor Eric Rasmussen, August 2014.
  • Plenary session on William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays with Dr Pete Kirwan (University of Nottingham), British Graduate Shakespeare Conference, Shakespeare Institute, June 2014.
  • ‘Canon, Chronology and Collaboration in Shakespeare’s Early Career’. Invited participant alongside John Jowett, Gary Taylor, MacD. Jackson and others in ‘Early Shakespeare’ seminar, Shakespeare 450 Conference, Société Française, Paris, April 2014.
  • ‘Shakespeare, Authorship, and Emotionality in the Hand D section of Sir Thomas More’, University of Queensland, Centre for the History of Emotions, 2013.
  • ‘The Influence of Anxiety(?): Thoughts on the Supposed 'Crisis in Editing' and the use of Editions in Pedagogical Practice’, British Shakespeare Association Conference, Lancaster, 2012.
  • ‘A Geography of History: Considering the Roles of Place and Distance within Politics and ‘History’ in 2 Henry IV’, Henry IV Part 2 seminar, Shakespeare Association of America Annual Conference, Seattle, 2011.

Selected activities

  • General Editor, Digital Renaissance Editions, with Brett Hirsch (University of Western Australia), Eleanor Lowe (Oxford Brookes) and Dr Sarah Neville (University of West Virginia). Online edition and platform hosted by University of Western Australia and University of Victoria. 
  • Co-Founder and Trustee of the Lizz Ketterer Trust and Ketterer’s Men – registered charity established in memory of Dr Lizz Ketterer, fundraising activities support yearly scholarship for a student from The Winedale Shakespeare Programme in Texas to attend the RSC Summer School at the Shakespeare Institute. In 2013-14 I directed and performed in a production of Pericles as a fundraiser. 

Memberships

  • British Shakespeare Association
  • Shakespeare Association of America
  • Malone Society
  • World Shakespeare Congress (WSC)

Links