Dr Chris Laoutaris MA, PhD (University College London), BAPDF (British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow, 2007-2010)

• Awarded a Birmingham Fellowship for a project on Shakespeare’s First Folio (The Shakespeare Institute) 
• Awarded a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship for the research and writing of Shakespeare and the Countess: The Battle that Gave Birth to the Globe (University College London)
• PhD, ‘Shakespearean Maternities: Crises of Conception in Early Modern England’. Awarded full funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (University College London)
• MA English: Renaissance to Enlightenment, graduating with year’s highest Distinction. Awarded full funding by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (University College London)
• BA English, graduating as year’s Morley Medallist with the highest First Class Honours (University College London)

I pursued all my degrees at University College London where I was awarded the Morley Medal in English, the Ker Memorial Prize in English, and accorded a place on the Dean’s List for Academic Achievement. Shortly afterwards I was awarded a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship for Shakespeare and the Countess: The Battle that Gave Birth to the Globe, which was shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize for Biography (sponsored by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch). My first book was entitled Shakespearean Maternities: Crises of Conception in Early Modern England (Edinburgh), and I have been a contributor to two of Ashgate Press’s Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama series of books, as well as author of a survey of activist female translators and historical writers for Palgrave Macmillan’s History of British Women’s Writing: 1500-1610, which won the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women Collaborative Project Award and was called ‘a landmark volume’. I am also contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s First Folio, edited by Emma Smith, among other academic publications.

On joining the Shakespeare Institute, I was awarded a Birmingham Fellowship to pursue the project which became Shakespeare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives Behind the First Folio, published by HarperCollins’ William Collins imprint, which secured the rights for two books in competition with several other major commercial publishers. My first poetry collection, Bleed and See (Broken Sleep Books), which includes an essay on critical disability studies and the role of the carer, was shortlisted for the Eric Gregory Poetry Awards, and my first co-edited volume of poetry is Anne-thology: Poems Representing Anne Shakespeare (Broken Sleep Books), the world’s first collection of poems devoted to Anne Shakespeare. I am currently working on The Devil and the Crown: Sir Robert Cecil, Queen’s Statesman and Kingmaker (HarperCollins: William Collins), and a co-edited collection of interdisciplinary essays with Dr Yasmin Arshad, entitled Women and Cultures of Portraiture in the British Literary Renaissance (Arden: Bloomsbury).

I am the Co-Founder and Co-Chair, with Professor Michael Dobson and Dr Rowan Mackenzie, of the Shakespeare Beyond Borders Alliance (SBBA), a Shakespeare network devoted to crossing disciplinary, national, geographical and social borders – a Shakespeare network without limits! The project includes the creation of the EQUALityShakespeare (EQUALS) initiative, Co-Chaired with Dr Yasmin Arshad. 

I teach Shakespeare and early modern drama, but my specialisms are broad and highly interdisciplinary. I particularly enjoy blending medical histories, archaeology, art history, teratology, post-humanism, gender studies, and the histories of magic and superstition with the teaching of Shakespeare. I have convened and taught numerous modules, including the Shakespeare’s Theatre MA core module, the Research Skills in Shakespeare B module, Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems, and the Shakespeare’s Bodies of Knowledge module (entirely my own creation, which I convene and which explores Shakespeare’s representation of the human body from a range of disciplinary angles and approaches).

I am currently co-creating the Shakespeare’s Worlds/The World’s Shakespeares module, which will begin in the 2024-25 academic year and will explore the construction of nationalities, ethnicities and cultural identities in Shakespeare’s plays, as well as the ways in which various countries and cultures around the world have created their own ‘Shakespeares’. As well as Shakespeare my teaching experience and interests in the early modern period include: Shakespeare’s theatres; women’s history, literatures and translations; the First Folio; revenge tragedies (Thomas Kyd and Thomas Middleton); city comedies (Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton); Elizabethan prose fiction (John Lyly and Thomas Nashe); metaphysical poetry (John Donne); Marlowe’s plays; Milton’s poetry and political writings; and a full module on Ben Jonson, covering a selection of plays, court masques, the poetry, and the Discoveries; among other subjects.

I am currently supervising or co-supervising subjects as diverse as Shakespeare’s military spouses; Shakespeare in applied theatre settings; Shakespeare and the body; and the menopausal female body in Shakespeare. I have also been involved in the supervision of doctoral students in the following areas: infanticide in Early Modern England; elite female self-starvers in Renaissance England; and Shakespeare and Domestic Tragedy. I would be interested in hearing from prospective doctoral students working in any areas covering my main research interests (see ‘Research’ section below).

Find out more - our PhD Shakespeare Studies  page has information about doctoral research at the University of Birmingham.

Particular areas of interest include the history of the Blackfriars and Globe theatres; Renaissance anatomy and dissection; witchcraft, ritual and superstition in early modern England; Renaissance satiric utterance; early modern natural-historical enquiry; cultures of melancholy; the literature and material culture of wonder and curiosity; early modern figurations of monstrosity; funerary monuments and the Renaissance death-ritual; connections between Renaissance portraiture and literature; the uses of emblems in dramatic literature; early modern robotics, artificial life and post-humanism; the literary and political uses of Tacitism; the circle of the Earl of Essex; Renaissance politics; Puritanism; maternity, women’s history and indomitable female figures of the Renaissance.

I particularly enjoy interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Shakespeare and Renaissance literature, combining techniques used in art-historical, archaeological, biographical, and medical forms of historical enquiry. My interest in England’s heritage and my methodological approach has involved me in direct on-site research at archaeological sites, castles, stately homes, museums, churches and cathedrals, grottoes and follies, auction-houses, private collections, galleries, English cultural heritage sites and other historic buildings.

I firmly believe that sound research grounded in palaeographical experience and training in the archives is a crucial means of learning about Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The cornerstone of all my publications/projects has always been contact with original manuscript and source material, and I have extensive experience of working with state papers, letters, diaries, wills, property deeds, heraldic documents, funerary itineraries, receipt books, medical treatises, epitaphic inscriptions, anatomical fugitive sheets, legal texts, privy council acts, and trial documents.

My recent media work includes BBC1’s The One Show, Rik Television Cyprus, BBC Midlands, Notimex (Mexico’s largest media network), History News Network USA, and a British Council Shakespeare documentary (interviewed by Ben Crystal as part of the BBC’s Shakespeare Festival), as well as radio interviews for BBC Radio London, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National, and Newstalk Radio, Dublin. I have written for numerous newspapers and magazines (see introductory section above) and my work has been reviewed in many major media and press outlets, including The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mail, Independent, London Review of Books, Literary Review, New Statesman, Herald, Big Issue, Washington Post, New York Times, and New York Post, among many others. I regularly present my research at public events, conferences and institutions, including conferences for the Shakespeare Association of America, Renaissance Society of America, Society for the Study of Early Modern Women, and others. Recent public lectures include those given at the Royal Shakespeare Company; Victoria and Albert Museum; Hay Festival; Hillingdon Literary Festival; Royal Collection (National Portrait Gallery of Scotland and Palace of Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh); the Biographers’ Club; University of Oxford; Bisham Abbey; London Jewish Cultural Centre; Polish Hearth Club; and the Severis Foundation, Cyprus.

Many of my recent media appearances related to new discoveries presented in my book Shakespeare and the Countess, which was shortlisted for the Tony Lothian Prize (Biography), was Observer Book of the Year, a Telegraph Book of the Year, Telegraph Book of the Week, Marylebone Journal Book of the Week, one of the New York Post’s ‘Must-Read Books’, one of the Daily Telegraph’s top ten history holiday reads, Living Literature Society Book of the Month, one of Broadway Direct USA’s ‘Bookfilter’s Best of Summer Picks’, and Bookseller’s no. 8 in the top ten most reviewed books for season of its release. I am currently in discussions with various producers about the prospect of optioning Shakespeare and the Countess for film.