The Shakespeare Institute entered into its collaboration with Nanjing University in 2016, with the two institutions joining Nanjing-based Yilin Press in establishing The Shakespeare Centre, China.
Nanjing already had a pre-eminent reputation for Shakespeare studies in China, having been the only Chinese university to mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth in 1964, and being the institutional home of the influential Shakespearean scholar Professor Cong Cong (co-director of the Centre, alongside Michael Dobson of the Shakespeare Institute and Dr Nan Yuan of Yilin Press).
During the collaboration, students and faculty at Nanjing have served as guinea-pigs and assistants on some of the new actor-friendly Mandarin translations of Shakespeare commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, two of which - Hamlet and Henry V - have been published by Yilin.
Yilin have also published a collection of essays arising from collaborative seminars, Shakespeare and Space, which includes work (also newly translated into Mandarin) by Institute faculty members Tiffany Stern, Chris Laoutaris and Michael Dobson. A pan-Chinese student Shakespeare festival, incorporating performance and text workshops with Institute faculty, which was organized for the spring of 2020, will take place as soon as Covid restrictions permit. Meanwhile, the Institute and Nanjing continue to converse on Zoom, and Stratford especially welcomes PhD applications from Nanjing's research community.
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