Agenda

Interview

1. Please provide a brief outline of your training and scientific activity.
I am Professor of Shakespeare and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK, where I teach on undergraduate modules that look at theatre from the Greeks to the present, and at Shakespeare intensively.  I currently supervise four PhD students, and my teaching is recognised by a Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence and by a National Teaching Fellowship. My monographs include Clamorous Voices: Shakespeare's Women Today; Enter the Body: Women and Representation of Shakespeare's Stage; Shakespeare and Child's Play: Performing Lost Boys on Stage and Screen; and  Antony and Cleopatra in Performance. My current research project is Lying Abroad: Henry Wotton and the Invention of Diplomacy.
 
2. Please state your reasons for choosing Venice and the Department for your research and teaching stay.
My research project on Henry Wotton, sent ambassador to the Venetian Republic in 1604, first brought me to Venice and to the Archivio di Stato (where Wotton's state papers are filed) a decade ago.  I have been returning every year since for periods of one to several months,  and in that time I have developed collaborations with colleagues at Ca' Foscari -- Prof. Laura Tosi, Prof. Shaul Bassi --  that have enriched my understanding of Venice both then and now. This teaching opportunity allows me to bring some of what I know of Shakespeare to Venice while also giving me time to continue thinking and writing about Wotton as an Englishman in La Serenissima.
3. Have you ever had a research collaboration with the teaching staff of Department of Linguistics and Comparative Cultural Studies in the past?
Yes, most extensively in The Merchant of Venice in the Ghetto (2015-18) project that Prof. Bassi headed, forming an European consortium that brought together a number of contributing universities, one of them mine. The project extended from the performance of the play itself in the Venetian Ghetto in 2016 to a number of collateral events including two summer schools and a conference that I organised at Warwick ('Hard Words for Children') where Prof. Tosi was a major speaker. I was pleased to give a lecture to Prof. Bassi's undergraduate Shakespeare class in May 2022 on 'Staging the Storm in King Lear'.