About us
King’s College London is delighted to announce the launch of a new Centre for research, learning and teaching in Shakespeare and Early Modern studies. The London Shakespeare Centre builds on our external partnerships, including those with Shakespeare’s Globe and the British Library. We offer a range of specialist academic programmes at BA, MA and PhD level as well as summer schools and short courses to promulgate Shakespeare studies beyond the academic community. The Centre works across disciplinary boundaries, both in teaching and research, forming links with, for example, our academic Departments of History, Film Studies, Computing in the Humanities, and Cultural and Creative Industries.
The English Department at King’s has a distinguished international reputation for the study of Shakespeare, with a history of outstanding scholars in the field from Sir Israel Gollancz to Geoffrey Bullough and, most recently, Richard Proudfoot. A major reason for our current prestige is our centrality to the world-renowned Shakespeare series produced by Arden. Current members of staff include Ann Thompson, a General Editor of the Arden Shakespeare and co-editor of their latest Hamlet; Gordon McMullan, General Editor of the new Arden Early Modern Drama series, which he initiated, and editor of Henry VIII for the Arden Shakespeare; and Sonia Massai, who is currently editing ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore for Arden Early Modern Drama. We also have close ties to the new Norton Shakespeare; Gordon McMullan is a General Textual Editor, while Ann Thompson and Hannah Crawforth are both editing texts for the volume.
We are, however, not only editors: all of us have equal commitment to critical work and our range enables us to offer teaching and supervision in the three key areas sought by potential students: in the original circumstances and historical contexts for the production of Shakespeare’s works; in the nature of Shakespearean texts and the reproduction and transmission of those texts; and in the subsequent analysis, adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare around the world.