Dr Susan Brock BA, PhD (Birmingham), DAA (University of Wales, Bangor)

Shakespeare Institute
Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute

Contact details

Telephone
+44 (0) 1608 682409
Email
s.brock9@btinternet.com
Address
The Shakespeare Institute
Mason Croft
Church Street
Stratford-upon-Avon
CV37 6HP
UK

I have a long association with the Institute where I was a postgraduate student and then on the staff as Research Assistant and later as Librarian. My engagement with the Shakespeare community in Stratford-upon-Avon, the UK and internationally began there and continues.

Biography

Susan Brock was formerly  Academic Manager at the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (2010-2013) and Administrator of the CAPITAL Centre at Warwick, a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning focusing on creativity and performance (2005-2010) both at the University of Warwick;  Head of Academic Resource Development (1997-2000) and then Head of Library and Information Resources at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (2000-2005); Executive Secretary of the International Shakespeare Association (1997-2000); and Librarian at the Shakespeare Institute (1978-1997). While at the Shakespeare Institute, she oversaw the move of the Institute Library from the University campus to Stratford-upon-Avon and the building of the Johnson Library at Mason Croft.

Her doctoral thesis was an edition of the neo-latin drama Labyrinthus (1598) by Walter Hawkesworth. While researching the thesis for the Department of Classics at Birmingham she discovered the Institute Library and stayed. She qualified as an archivist in 1975.

Research

Early modern theatre communities, Shakespeare in performance, and Warwickshire local history.

Other activities

  • Honorary Secretary, Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon (1990-2000, 2010-2018); currently Committee Chair.  
  • Honorary Fellow of the Shakespeare Institute since 1992.

Publications

Her publications include (with Marian Pringle) The Shakespeare Memorial Theatre 1919-1945, Theatre in Focus (Cambridge: Chadwyck Healey, 1984)  and (with E.A.J. Honigmann) Playhouse Wills 1558-1642: An Edition of Wills by Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Revels Plays Companion Library (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993): Walter Hawkesworth: 'Leander' and 'Labyrinthus', Renaissance Latin Drama in England, 2nd ser., 3 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1987); The History of the Shakespeare Club of Stratford-upon-Avon 1824-2106 (Stratford-upon-Avon: The Shakespeare  Club, 2016)

She has contributed to the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), the Stanford Global Shakespeare Encyclopedia (forthcoming 2018/9) and to the Dictionary of National Biography. She was Associate Editor of The Years Work in English Studies (1983-8) and served on the editorial board of the Revels Plays Companion series for a number of years.