About the Shakespeare Institute

The Institute offers an environment in which students and staff are encouraged to be creative. We want to bring the directors, actors, writers, arts administrators, teachers and academics of the future to Stratford. We want to bring Shakespeare to life in new ways in the present.

Former Directors include major Shakespeareans such as Allardyce Nicoll, Philip Brockbank, Stanley Wells, Peter Holland and Kate McLuskie. Under the leadership of Professor Michael Dobson, the Institute is stronger in depth and scope than ever.

Home to world renowned academic staff, the Institute allows our vibrant community of postgraduate students to explore Shakespeare from a range of different perspectives. Though everything returns to Shakespeare, the research interests of its fellows have never been so exhilaratingly diverse. It provides the ideal environment in which to explore the impact Shakespeare’s work has had across four centuries of world culture.

Shakespeare Institute students benefit from our exciting collaboration with the RSC. This offers students a truly unique learning experience, blending academia and creativity in an exciting new way to foster innovative methods of theatre and learning. Students benefit from the expertise of RSC artists and practitioners through innovative modules, workshops and projects. These cover subjects such as directing, playwriting, lighting and design.

There is no research culture more vibrant than the Shakespeare Institute’s. It is home to the Shakespeare Institute Players. Every week its historic rooms and gardens buzz with rarely-played play readings, theatrical experiments and all sorts of other Shakespeare-inspired activity. Our famous Thursday seminars attract the big hitters of Shakespeare studies, as well as directors and actors. 

All that is without saying that at the Institute you can study Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon where he was born and died. Just a short walk away from the RSC!

The Institute offers an environment in which students and staff are encouraged to be creative. Several staff are involved in major creative projects and are incorporating exciting new creative elements into their teaching.

They benefit, too, from our international collaborations. These include Waseda University in Japan, Nanjing University in China, and Shakespeare-focussed organisations across Europe and North America. To be a Shakespeare Institute student – whether on site or via our distance learning programmes – is to be at the centre of global networks in Shakespearean studies.

• How to visit the Institute

Stratford-upon-Avon

Being based in the heart of Stratford upon Avon, the Shakespeare Institute enjoys close and developing relations with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. We have our own purpose-built world-class research library, run by a priceless team of expert librarians. We host the biennial International Shakespeare Conference. the most prestigious international Shakespeare conference in the world. There is also the biggest postgraduate conference in Shakespeare studies. A host of major Shakespearean projects are based in whole or in part in the building:

• the most influential Shakespeare imprint, the Oxford Shakespeare
• the most important Shakespeare annual, Shakespeare Survey
• the high-profile Shakespeare Now! and Palgrave Shakespeare Studies series
• the first catalogue of all of Renaissance drama.

The Malone Society is administered at the Institute, and the Shakespeare Club - the oldest Shakespeare society in existence - meets here. Institute staff are leading lights in many of the most important international Shakespeare organisations. They have places on the boards of the British Shakespeare Association, the European Shakespeare Research Association and the foremost American journal, Shakespeare Quarterly.

• Living in Stratford upon Avon while you study and accommodation information

Virtual tour

Use our interactive virtual tour to move around the Shakespeare Institute today. Navigate through the library, gardens, music hall, seminar rooms and main hall