I joined Southampton as Professor of English Studies in 2006, becoming founder/director of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture. For four years, I was Head of English, with the department enjoying great success in all the league tables. Prior to that I was at Queen Mary, University of London. I became Professor Emeritus in 2018, and Visiting Plumer Fellow (2018) at St Anne’s, University of Oxford.
I have served on the academic committee of Shakespeare’s Globe, London, and on the Boards of Directors of the English Shakespeare Company, and Nuffield Southampton Theatres. I am a longstanding member of the AHRC Peer Review College— a panel member and chair, and a Strategic Reviewer.
My writing combines standard archival academic research in the history and culture of Early Modern England with practical skills in performance. I have run a professional theatre company and directed many early modern plays (Middleton, Webster and Shakespeare) with both student and professional actors. I am also a musician; I sing, and play the cello (ARCM performers), piano, and lute. My books (including The Works of Richard Edwards: Politics, Poetry and Performance in Early Modern England; Cymbeline: Constructions of Britain; and Shakespeare: a Beginner’s Guide) have been variously reviewed as ‘of interest to any humanities researcher’, ‘surprising but suggestive’, and ‘ebulliently pluralistic’.
I have a long-standing interest in applied theatre, both in education and in therapeutic settings. For many years, I ran an innovative module for undergraduates at Queen Mary, enabling them to lead practical performance and creative writing workshops centring on a Shakespeare play (usually King Lear) with whole, mixed-ability classes in local inner London primary and secondary schools. At Southampton, I have contributed to the Medical Humanities module for first year medical students by using The Winter’s Tale to inspire the students’ creative thinking about mental health, body language, and doctor/patient interactions.