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Wednesday 17th June
Time
Event Details
19:00-21:00
Welcome Social at The Dirty Duck
Location: Stratford-upon-Avon
OR
The Digital Tavern: An Online Mixer
Location: Zoom
Thursday 18th June
Time
Room
Session Details
09:00-09:45
Entrance Lobby Conservatory
In-person Registration with Paige Calvert
Welcome Teas and Coffees with Pastries and Fruit
09:45-10:25
Hall
Chair: Clare-Louise
IT: James Warren
Opening Remarks:
Clare-Louise Rhys-Jones (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Plenary Session | Conference Theme Introduction:
Dr Erin Sullivan (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
10:25-10:30
Conservatory
Brief Interlude
10:30-11:30
Hall
Chair: Ellie Milne
IT: James Warren
Plenary Session:
Dr Valentina Finger (she/her), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Online)
Shakespeare Through the Telescope: Monarchs, Magi, and What They See in Mirrors
11:30-11:50
Conservatory
Tea and Coffee Break
Time
Room
Session One
11:50-13:10
Reading Room
Chair: Liz Larson
IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 1: Governmental Scrutiny and Political Resistance in Early Modern and Modern Contexts
Reagan Kimzey (she/her), University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Shakespearean Actor turned Assassin; John Wilkes Booth’s Final Role (In-person)
Sue Tupman (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
The vigilance of the vulnerable state (In-person)
Steven Whitaker (he/him), University of Sheffield
‘There is a world elsewhere’: the Psychology of Defection in Coriolanus and Sir Thomas More (In-person)
Lounge
Chair: Miranda Brabban IT: Chloe Leonard
Panel 2: Gendered Surveillance and the Politics of Observation
Taylor Kindron (she/her), University of Massachusetts
Amherst Spying on Womanhood: The “Aside” Device and Male Surveillance Culture in Troilus and Cressida (In-person)
Ann-Cathrine Döderlein (she/her), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
“In these confines slyly have I lurked to watch the waning of mine enemies”: Margaret of Anjou and the Spectral Politics of the Aside (In-person)
William Bajwa (he/him), King’s College London / The Globe Education Shakespeare
on/in Prison: Can Shakespeare provide liberation from a state of surveillance — or is he the one watching? (In-person)
Hall
Chair: Joshua Caldicott IT: James Warren
Panel 3: Sensorial Shakespeare: Perceptual Instability and Epistemic Uncertainty
Danielle Nagler Wolfson (she/her), Bar-Ilan University
Close Reading the Sense of Taste: Uncovering Multiple Meanings in Shakespeare’s Work (Online)
Pia Fenzl (she/they), University of Salzburg
“Do you see nothing there?”: The Spectral Spectator ‒ Hamlet, Macbeth and the Question of the (In-)visible (In-person)
13:10-14:00
Lunch Room
Lunch
Time
Room
Session Two
14:00-15:20
Reading Room
Chair: Áine Maher
IT: Josh Freedman
Panel 4: Staging Surveillance States Through Affect and Adaptation
Berna Bozdag (she/her), Atılım University
‘Denmark’s a Prison’: Affective Surveillance and the Rhizomatic Court in Hamlet (In-person)
Bri Webber (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Out, damned dossier!: MI6, Thatcher, and Macbeth (Noble, 1986) (In-person)
Lounge
Chair: Joel Dungworth
IT: James Warren
Panel 5: Categorisation, Misclassification, and Identity in the works of Ben Jonson
Amanda Fiorani Barreto (she/her), PUC-Rio / The University of Edinburgh
Inqueering Volpone: reframing Ben Jonson’s 1606 play (In-person)
Dr. Shirley Bell (she/her), Sheffield Hallam University
“She’s a lady gay”: Challenging the ‘male gaze’ in Ben Jonson’s The New Inn (1631) (In-person)
Annexe
Chair: Benjamin
Jackson
IT: Evelyn Lee
Panel 6: Mediating Knowledge Systems: Letters, Performance, and Archival Infrastructures
Joanne Owen (she/her), King’s College London
Petruccio’s ‘counsell’: The Burley Manuscript and Evading Surveillance in The Taming of the Shrew (In-person)
Godfred Ogoe (he/him), The Ohio State University
The Communal Reception of Shakespeare’s Dramatic Letters (Online)
Elena Botts, University of Essex
Digital Memories (Online)
Hall
Chair: Louisa Pickard
IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 7: Gender, Shame and The Reproductive Body Under Scrutiny
Lucy Hurst (she/her), University of Bristol
Staging Shame through Dance in Middleton’s More Dissemblers Besides Women (In-person)
Olivia Alsup (she/her), University of Iowa
“Copy of the Father”: Constructing Masculinity Around the Pregnant Body in The Winter’s Tale (Online)
Lydia Sophia Christensen (she/her), Mary Baldwin University
“Herbs of Grace”: Rosemary, Rue, and Abortion Care in Shakespeare’s Canon (Online)
15:20-15:40
Conservatory
Tea and Coffee Break
Time
Room
Session Three
15:40-17:00
Reading Room
Chair: Miranda Brabban IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 8: Transatlantic Theatrical Archives, Performance Histories, and Cultural Exchange
Anne Nichole Alegre (she/her), Birmingham City University
Displaying Transatlantic Diplomacy: American Portraits in the RSC’s Fine Art & Sculpture Collection (In-person)
Elisabeth Hayward (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
From Ashes to Legacy: Women and the Rebuilding of the Shakespeare Memorial (In-person)
Rachel Stevenson (she/her), Independent Researcher
Watching People Watching Shakespeare: Exploring Commercial Theatre Through Shakespeare’s Return to Theatre Royal Drury Lane (In-person)
Lounge
Chair: Liz Larson
IT: James Warren
Panel 9: Classical Antiquity and Its Early Modern Afterlives
Ian Donnelly (he/him), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Privacy, Secrecy and Revelation in Lady Jane Lumley’s Iphigenia (In-person)
Jen Slager (she/her), Independent Researcher
Translating Plutarch, Translation Culture in Early Modern England (Online)
Anna Jiang (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Narrating ‘Cupid and Psyche’: Apuleius’s The Golden Ass and Early Modern Youth Education (In-person)
Annexe
Chair: Katharine Cognard-Black
IT: Lily Boneham
Panel 10: Postcolonial Shakespeare: Race, Region, and Global Reception
Ashley Smith (she/her), The University of British Columbia
All that Grows: Agriculture and Colonial Racialization in Othello (In-person)
Charmaine Cordero (they/them), Claremont Graduate University
That I Am: Chicanx Bicultural/Biracial Identity Development in Borderlands Shakespeare (Online)
Devanshu Pandey (he/him), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
The Colour of Caste: Colourism and Misrepresentation in Indian Shakespeare Adaptations (Online)
Hall
Chair: Áine Maher
IT: Áine Maher
BritGrad Play Reading:
Alice Richmond (she/they)
The Shakespeare Institute’s Early Modern Reading Series Presents Ben Jonson’s 'Volpone'
17:00-17:15
Leave Building
19:00-21:00
Stratford Scavenger Hunt followed by Drinks at The One Elm
Location: For the hunt, meet outside the RSC,
then The One Elm, Stratford-upon-Avon
OR
The Bard’s Quest: An Online Scavenger Hunt
Location: Zoom
Friday 19th June
Time
Room
Session Details
09:00-09:20
Entrance Lobby
In-person Registration with Paige Calvert
Time
Room
Session Four
09:20-10:40
Reading Room
Chair: Liz Larson
IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 11: Eroticism, Kink, and Desire in Early Modern and Shakespearean Performance
Francisco Simãozinho Martins (he/him), NOVA-FCSH
Structuring Pleasure: Gaps, Knowledge and the Dildo in Nashe’s The Choises of Valentine (In-person)
Claire Kinch (she/her), King’s College London
‘Who bade you stoop?’ Kink and Consent in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (In-person)
Miranda Brabban (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Shakespeare’s Erotic Dissection: A Comparative Analysis of Feminised Dissection in Titus Andronicus and King Lear (In-person)
Lounge
Chair: Louisa Pickard
IT: Evelyn Lee
Panel 12: Blood, Water, and the Limits of Stability
Rachel Breckon (she/her), Northumbria University
“Our slippery people”: Blue Humanities methodologies and the scripting of national identity in Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra (In-person)
Alice Richmond (she/they), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
‘He was a thing of blood’: Coriolanus and Humoral Power (In-person)
Sofie Ruderman, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
“False as Water”: Liquid Perception and the Limits of Surveillance in ‘Othello’ (In-person)
Annexe
Chair: Amanda Fiorani Barreto
IT: Josh Freedman
Panel 13: Surveillance and Forensic Analyses of/in Hamlet
Amira Aloui (she/her), University of Szeged
“To Catch the Conscience of the King”: Forensic Theatre and the Limits of Reason of State in Hamlet (In-person)
Melissa Hiesmayr, University of Vienna
To Observe or Not to Observe: Hamlet and the Invention of the Self Under Scrutiny (Online)
Hall
Chair: AnnCathrine Döderlein
IT: James Warren
Panel 14: To Survey and be Surveyed: The Gendering of Space in Shakespeare’s Venetian Plays
Seoyun Jeong (she/her), Yonsei University
Perilous Path between Othello and Desdemona: Vulnerability in the Suspended Boundaries of Polis and Oikos in the Early Modern Venetian State (Online)
Nadine Schmidt (she/her), University of Siegen
“Watch Me Like Argus”: Women’s Agency and Gendered Surveillance in Shakespeare’s Venice Plays (In-person)
Michael Boothroyd (he/him), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
‘My Extremest Means’ in the Streets of Venice: Public Viewing of Bassanio and Antonio’s Intimate Relationship (Online)
10:40-11:00
Conservatory
Tea and Coffee Break
11:00-12:00
Hall
Chair: Clare-Louise
IT: James Warren
Plenary Session:
Dr. Rebecca Yearling (she/her), Keele University
Watching Shakespeare's Violence: Then and Now (In-person)
12:00–12:50
Lunch Room
Lunch
12:50-13:50
Hall
Chair: Áine Maher
IT: James Warren
Plenary Session:
Dr. Matthieu Chapman, SUNY New Paltz
“Who Wants to Be Taken Seriously?” (Online)
13:50-14:05
Conservatory
Tea and Coffee Break
Time
Room
Session Five
14:05-15:25
Reading Room
Chair: Rachel Senior
IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 15: Surveillance and Spectatorship from the City to the Countryside
Gustavo Sontag (he/him), Federal University of Santa Maria
Restless bodies, regulated spaces: Bosola and the drama of mobility in The Dutchess of Malfi (1614) (Online)
Joel Dungworth (he/him), Royal Holloway, University of London
Finding the Spenserian Turn: ‘Figuring Out’ in Pericles and The Faerie Queene (In-person)
Benjamin Jackson (he/him), University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Realms of Gold: Theatrum Mundi and Ecologies of Control in As You Like It (In-person)
Lounge
Chair: Audrey
Campbell-Eby
IT: Lily Boneham
Panel 16: Power, Marginalisation, and the Boundaries of Surveillance in Shakespeare’s Works
Nikolaos Nikolaidis (he/him), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Performing Under Surveillance: Gender, Authority, and the Politics of Visibility in Shakespeare’s Marginal Figures (In-person)
Courtney Beale (she/her), University of Edinburgh
Surveilling Others in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (In-person)
Chloe Leonard (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Watched Bodies, Controlled Desire: Surveillance and Youth Desire in Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet (In-person)
Annexe
Chair: Miranda Brabban
IT: James Warren
Panel 17: Witchcraft and the Supernatural: Humours, Trials, and Gender in Early Modern Drama
Lily Geering (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Observing the preternatural in Macbeth and Othello (In-person)
Lotte Karoliussen (she/her), University of Bergen
The King, the Bard, and the Witches: Witchcraft Legislation and the Supernatural in Shakespeare’s Works (In-person)
Anna Malá (she/her), Charles University
Maiden, Mother, Witch: Femininity in the First Tetralogy (Online)
Hall
Chair: Clare-Louise
IT: Paige Calvert
Workshop 1: (Re)mapping the Canon: Embodied Knowledge as Anti-racist Practice
CJ Turner-McMullan (they/them), Bath Spa University – Part One (In-person)
Xin Ying Lim (she/her), University of Hull – Part Two (In-person)
15:25-15:40
Conservatory
Tea and Coffee Break
Time
Room
Session Six
15:40-17:00
Reading Room
Chair: Paige Calvert
IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 18: Shakespeare and the Archive: Forensic Methods and the Question of Evidence
Steve Rohan-Jones, University of Queensland
“A Little Touch of Harry in the Night”: Forensic Surveillance and Intention Recta in the Henriad (Online)
Rebecca Mahar (she/her), University of Edinburgh
A forensic bibliography of Henry IV, Part 1’s Welsh scene at the RSC, from Anwyl to Griffith: interdisciplinary and paratextual approaches to production-centred Shakespeare research (In-person)
Josephine Geiger-Lee (she/her), University of Iowa
“And what to she adheres, which follows after, / Is th’argument of Time”: Perdita as the Black Archive (Online)
Lounge
Chair: Cyril Hamilton
IT: Chloe Leonard
Panel 19: Feminist Interventions: Identity, Voice, and the Body
Emília Rossetto Foschera (she/her), Federal University of Santa Maria
Is She a Woman and Therefore to Be Won? Surveillance and Control of the Female
Body in the Early Plays of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe (Online)
Beth Harris (she/her), Mary Baldwin University
When did Luciana Become a Kitchen Wench? Unediting The Comedy of Errors (Online)
Annexe
Chair: Miranda Brabban
IT: Evelyn Lee
Panel 20: Knowing Early Modern Women: Body and Mind
Hanna Gęba (she/her), University of Warsaw
How to examine the corporeality of the shrews in English Renaissance drama (In-person)
Anna Hayden (she/her), University of Notre Dame
From Alchemical Womb to Tomb: Pulter’s Reclamation of Women’s Embodied Knowledge (Online)
Hall
Chair: Liz Larson
IT: James Warren
Panel 21: Shakespeare and the Search for Proof: Perception, Evidence, and Visual Verification
Caminey Kuropatwa (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
‘Didst perceive?’: The burden of proof and precarity of perception in Hamlet and Othello (In-person)
Michelle Leonard (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
The Watched Woman: Female Surveillance and the Collapse of Ocular Proof in Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale (In-person)
Shiyu Gui (she/her), Waseda University
Verbalising Observation: The Rhetoric of Evidence in Othello (Online)
17:00-17:15
Leave Building
19:00-22:00
Garden Party and Film Screening
Location: Shakespeare Institute, Mason Croft
OR
Virtual Open Mic
Location: Zoom
Saturday 20th June
Time
Room
Session Details
08:50-09:05
Entrance Lobby
In-person Registration with Paige Calvert
Time
Room
Session Seven
09:05-10:25
Reading Room
Chair: Cassie Martin
IT: Josh Freedman
Panel 22: Forensic Readings / Experiments with Text
Crystal Biggin (she/her), University of Nottingham
Charlotte Lennox’s mid-eighteenth-century arguments about sources ‘so altered by Shakespear’ (In-person)
Elizabeth Seabourne (she/her), Independent Researcher
The Curious Case of the Upper Case: An Examination of the Capital Letters in Shakespeare’s First Folio (In-person)
Jenny Grober (she/her), King’s College London
Probable Verse: Dryden’s Heroic Drama and the Empirical Gaze (In-person)
Lounge
Chair: Liz Larson
IT: Chloe Leonard
Panel 23: Shakespeare In Action: Performance Practices on and off the Early Modern Stage
Sean O’Riordan (he/him), University of Sydney
Conservatoire acting students under Shakespearean surveillance (Online)
Jeanne van Leeuwen (she/they), University of Birmingham
Fools in a Polarised World: ethical fooling in today’s socio-political context (Online)
Joshua Caldicott (he/him), Independent Researcher
“If you look for a good speech now, you undo me”: Looking for Shakespeare, Overlooking Skilled Early Modern Performers (In-person)
Annexe
Chair: Courtney Beale
IT: Lily Boneham
Panel 24: Observing Flesh in Early Modern Drama: Blood, Butchery, and Bodies
Isobel Strevens (she/her), University of Bristol
“Hang those quarters up”: Butchery and the Early Modern Stage (In-person)
Juliana Hall (she/they), Georgetown University
Compulsive and Violent Spectatorship in “Titus Andronicus” (Online)
Hall
Chair: Áine Maher
IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 25: Investigating Props and Material Culture on the Early Modern Stage
Sarah Hoskin (she/her), Queen Mary University of London
Stitching Secret Codes? A Close Reading of Early 17th-Century English Embroidery Through Material Culture and The Fair Maid of the Exchange (In-person)
Stevie Fure (she/her), University of Aberdeen
Mirrors of the Past in Richard III (In-person)
Ana Ribeiro (she/her), Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM)
Enter Lavinia with a basin: Analyzing Material Culture in Titus Andronicus (Online)
10:25-10:45
Conservatory
Tea and Coffee Break
10:45-12:05
Reading Room
Chair: Elizabeth Seabourne
IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 26: Mediating Religious Authority in Early Modern Drama
Liz Larson (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
The Playing Priests of Shakespeare (In-person)
Audrey Campbell-Eby (she/her), King’s College London
Performing Public Penance in Early Modern Drama: Restorative or Retributive? (In-person)
Elle Lewis-Eme (she/her), Mary Baldwin University
Your Body is a Temple: Examining Feminized Architectural Images in The Dutchess of Malfi (Online)
Lounge
Chair: Isobel Stevens
IT: Evelyn Lee
Panel 27: Trans Identity and Queer Resistance in Shakespeare’s Works
Leia Ransley (she/her), Independent Researcher
Surveillance, Audiences and Temporary Queerness: Female Cross-Dressing and Travel in Shakespearean Comedies (Online)
Katharine Cognard-Black (she/her), University of Massachusetts
Amherst Desire and Duet: Queer Poetics of Sound in Twelfth Night (In-person)
Cyril Hamilton (he/him), King’s College London
Deposition as Detransition: “The King’s Two Bodies”, Trans Studies, and Shakespeare’s “Richard II” (In-person)
Annexe
Chair: Kibria Nasir
IT: Josh Freedman
Panel 28: Mechanisms of Truth: Perception and Political Adaptation
Gemma Boon (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Walls Have Ears: Acoustic Surveillance and Sonic Misreading in Shakespeare (In-person)
Penny Houseman (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Before Big Brother: Shakespeare and the Failure of Surveillance (In-person)
Rita El Bacha (she/her), University of Montpellier Paul-Valéry / Saint Joseph University of Beirut
A genesis study of Jawad Al-Assadi’s Forget Hamlet (Egypt, 1994): Tracked Tank Macbeth (Baghdad, 1991) as a point of departure (Online)
Hall
Chair: Nadine Schmidt
IT: James Warren
Workshop 2: The Impact of Textual Revision on Characterisation
Paige Calvert (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
“Thus play I in one person many people”: Character Exploration Through Role-Split Casting (In-person)
Agnes Pethers (she/her), King’s College London / The Globe
“Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, / Nor set down aught in malice”: analysing the embodied effect of both performing and observing performance of Othello from three different editions (In-person)
12:05-12:20
Conservatory
Tea and Coffee Break
12:20-13:20
Hall
Chair: Paige Calvert
IT: James Warren
Plenary Session:
Dr. Kelsey Ridge (she/her), Alvernia University
“take no note of him, but let him go”: Unequal Surveillance in Much Ado About Nothing (Online)
13:20-14:10
Lunch Room
Lunch
Time
Room
Session Nine
14:10-15:30
Reading Room
Chair: Miranda Brabban
IT: Ellie Milne
Panel 29: Performing Surveillance in the Digital Age
Cassie Martin, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
‘The observed of all observers’: Watching ‘Hamlet’ and watching Hamlet (In-person)
Sarah Temmar (she/her), University of Montpellier
Paul Valéry Othello Under Surveillance: Censorship, Cameras, and Algerian Afterlives (1952/2016) (Online)
Lounge
Chair: Áine Maher
IT: Chloe Leonard
Panel 30: Shakespeare’s Women Under Scrutiny: Power, Anger, and the Regulation of Female Agency
Lynda Honeybourne Biles (she/they), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Katherina Held at Gunpoint, Isabella Jumps Over the Edge: Observing Control and Cost Value of Women in Jude Christian’s The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare’s Globe, 2024) and Emily Burn’s Measure for Measure (Royal Shakespeare Company, 2025) (In-person)
Tom Barnes (he/him), King’s College London
“Myself your loyal servant, your physician, Your most obedient counsellor” ‒ the role of the Royal Mistress in The Winter’s Tale (In-person)
Hannah Cotterill (she/her), Royal Holloway University of London
Cleopatra’s Anger Under the Microscope (Online)
Annexe
Chair: Dr Shirley Bell
IT: James Warren
Panel 31: Corruption and Political Ethics in Shakespeare’s Works
Gavin Mackay (he/him), Independent Researcher
The Spider in the Cup: Ocular Proof and Invisible Corruption in “The Winter’s Tale” (Online)
Myungsung Kim (she/her), Yonsei University
“A Man or a Fish?”: Forgiveness and Becoming ‘Human’ in The Tempest (Online)
Hall
Chair: Liz Larson
IT: Josh Freedman
Panel 32: The Effects of Surveillance in Early Modern Theatre and Its Afterlife
Ellie Rebecca Bunker (she/her), University of Sussex
“I May Pour my Spirits in Thine Ear”: Auditory Surveillance and the Wrong Connection of Ideas in Macbeth (Online)
Rachel Senior (she/her), University of Bristol
‘So shall my anticipation prevent your discovery’: anticipation and surveillance in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (In-person)
Kibria Nasir (she/her), Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Staged Under Surveillance: Spectatorship in Kashmiri Shakespeare Adaptations (In-person)
15:30-15:50
Conservatory
Tea and Coffee Break
15:50-16:50
Hall
Chair: Clare-Louise
IT: James Warren
Plenary Session:
Arthur Hughes (he/him)
Playing Richard III and Disability in Shakespeare (In-person)
16:50-17:00
Hall
Closing Remarks and Toast
17:00
Leave Building
19:00-20:00
20:00-22:00
Post-Conference Boat Cruise
Location: Stratford-upon-Avon Canal Basin
Conference Afterparty
Location: The Red Lion
OR
The Bard’s Big Quiz: A Virtual Shakespeare Pub Quiz
Location: Zoom
Notes for In-Person Attendees:
In-line with on-site allergies, the Shakespeare Institute is currently a NO NUTS, NO TOMATO, AND NO PINEAPPLE site. Lunch and refreshments will be provided as part of your ticket. If you do intend to bring food with you, you must adhere to these restrictions.
Note for Online Attendees:
For ease of navigation, all Zoom rooms will use the same titles as the physical rooms at the Shakespeare Institute. If you encounter any issues accessing Zoom links during the conference, please contact James Warren at IT.BritGrad@outlook.com
Contact
Mason Croft, Church Street
Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warickshire
United Kingdom, CV37 6HP
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