Prof David Schalkwyk heads up new Global Shakespeare project for Queen Mary’s

An internationally-renowned Shakespeare scholar has been appointed academic director of a new research collaboration in east London dedicated to the impact of The Bard worldwide.

Professor David Schalkwyk is to run Global Shakespeare, a partnership between London University’s Queen Mary College at Mile End and Warwick University.

Global Shakespeare has been set up to shape future research into criticism, performance, history and media from television to digital reproduction.

It is to offer programmes looking at historical and contemporary approaches into why Shakespeare is so relevant to scholars, performers, practitioners, artists and teachers in the 21st century, four centuries on—and especially to the next generation of students.

Prof Schalkwyk joins the programme next month from Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials.

He is a leading authority on the Bard and his works who recently published ‘Hamlet’s Dreams: The Robben Island Shakespeare’, which brings together the Robben Island Prison of Nelson Mandela and the prison that is Denmark for Hamlet.