The conference programme will include keynote lectures by Brandi Adams, David McInnis, Lucy Munro, Deborah Payne, and a plenary workshop led by Perry Mills.

Brandi Adams

Brandi Adams is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Arizona State University, a member of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and co-founder with Jonathan Hope of the Arizona Book History Group. Dr Adams’ research expertise lies at the intersection of book history, history of reading, Early Modern English drama, premodern critical race studies, and gender along with modern editorial practices of early English drama. She is currently preparing her first monograph, entitled Extraordinary Readers: A history of books through Early Modern English Drama.

David McInnis

David McInnis is Professor in English and Theatre Studies, the University of Melbourne and cofounder with Roslyn L. Knutson of the Lost Plays Database. In 2016 Professor McInnis was jointly awarded the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ Max Crawford Medal (Australia’s most prestigious award for achievement and promise in the humanities). He is President of the Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association (ANZSA) and, with Vanessa I. Corredera and Arthur L. Little, Jr., he is Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly. His publications include Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England (Palgrave, 2013), Shakespeare and Lost Plays (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and the Revels Plays edition of Dekker's Old Fortunatus (Manchester University Press, 2020). He is currently editing Abdelazer for the Cambridge Behn; Timon of Athens for the Arden Shakespeare 4th series; and (with Claire Bourne) the Tamburlaine plays for the Oxford Marlowe.

Perry Mills

Perry Mills is Director of Edward's Boys, and teaches English at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon (generally known as “Shakespeare’s School”). He also taught for several years on the English and Drama PGCE programme at the Institute of Education at the University of Warwick. He edited The Taming of the Shrew for the Cambridge School Shakespeare series and wrote the Cambridge Shakespeare Student Guide on As You Like It, both published by Cambridge University Press, and has written articles for the TES and other professional journals on many subjects relating to the teaching of English and Drama. As Director of “Edward’s Boys”, an all-boy company comprising members of the school, he explores the neglected repertoire of plays written for the boys’ companies around the turn of the seventeenth century. In recent years the company has been invited to perform at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick and Kings College London, as well as the RSC Swan and The Other Place Theatres and the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Lucy Munro

Lucy Munro is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature and Co-Director of Shakespeare Centre London, King’s College London. Professor Munro is a leading scholar of repertory studies, a former president of the Marlowe Society of America and President of the Shakespeare Association of America. Her publications include Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory (Cambridge University Press, 2005); Archaic Style in Early Modern Literature, 1590-1674 (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King’s Men (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2020). She has edited several early modern plays, including Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed (2010) and Dekker, Ford and Rowley’s The Witch of Edmonton (2016). Her current research has been exploring the interconnected histories of women, trade, colonisation and early modern playhouses.

Deborah Payne

Deborah Payne is Professor Emerita, American University Washington DC. Professor Payne is an expert on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theatre, who has published widely on topics from the Restoration actress to baroque opera. Her publications include an edition of Four Restoration Libertine Plays for Oxford World’s Classics English Drama series (2005), and recent monographs include The Business of English Restoration Theatre, 1660 - 1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Shakespeare in the Theatre: Shakespeare Theatre Company (Arden/Bloomsbury, 2024), which she co-authored with Drew Lichtenberg.