Research Supervisor Connect
I teach, supervise and research widely in the field of early modern English literature. I was director of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre in 2012-13 and president of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association from 2009-13. I have held visiting fellowships at the Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, Oxford Brookes University, and the Universities of Nottingham, Warwick, Essex and Auckland.
My research activity has three main areas of focus: Shakespeare and pedagogy in literary studies at school and university; English women’s writing of the mid-seventeenth century; and early modern English literature and the visual arts.
My research into pedagogy addresses the problem of how creativity and innovation operate within formal educational systems. Key to this is understanding the entanglement of educators and students in neoliberal, managerial and standardized teaching and learning contexts. My book, Teaching Shakespeare and Marlowe: Learning vs the System (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2013) is an attempt to understand this context. The book draws on my experience as part of a long-running collaborative research project with a Sydney school. The project began as ‘Shakespeare Reloaded’ in 2008 and continues as ‘Better Strangers’. The project hosted the Shakespeare FuturEd Conference in 2019 and co-hosted an earlier conference in 2010 that led to the book collection Teaching Shakespeare beyond the Centre: Australasian Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). The project website is Shakespeare Reloaded. I am co-series editor with Gillian Woods (Birkbeck) of the Cambridge Elements Series 'Shakespeare and Pedagogy' and co-editor (with C. Hansen and J. Manuel) of Reimagining Shakespeare Education: Teaching and Learning through Collaboration (CUP, 2023).
My research into seventeenth-century English women’s writing has focussed on religious and secular verse and prose. I published a critical edition of the anonymous Puritan woman’s book, Eliza’s Babes or the Virgin’s Offering (FDUP, 2001), and am currently researching the early works of Margaret Cavendish in terms of how she accesses natural philosophical knowledge from the late 1640s to mid-1650s.
My research into early modern visual arts and literature began with my book The English Mannerist Poets and the Visual Arts (FDUP, 1998) and has continued recently with my revisionary account of the grotesque in The Early Modern Grotesque: English Sources and Documents 1500-1700 (Routledge, 2019).
English, School of Art, Communication and English (SACE)
Research interests
I welcome inquiries from potential postgraduate students who might be interested to pursue thesis work in any aspect of early modern English literature (my specialist period is 1500-1660) especially including my three focal areas described above.
1. If you are interested in this research opportunity, you are encouraged to email the academic directly. To find the academic’s email address, follow the link provided to their profile page. Introduce yourself and provide some academic background. You may be asked for an academic transcript. Explain why you are interested in your area of research and, if appropriate, why you are interested in working with the recipient.
2. Write an initial research proposal. (Refer to How to write a research proposal for guidance.) In no more than 2000 words demonstrate how your research experience aligns with the supervisor’s and why you’re interested in this opportunity.
3. If you would like general advice in your subject area before submitting an application, contact an academic advisor listed here: https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/study/postgraduate-research/postgraduate-research-contact.html
The opportunity ID for this research opportunity is 3037