Michael Dobson

Bionote

Michael Dobson is Director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon, and Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham. His previous employers include the Universities of London, Oxford, and Harvard, and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Professor Dobson is a General Editor of the Arden Performance Editions of Shakespeare series, an honorary governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company, a Member of Council of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Deputy Chair of Trustees of Flute Theatre, and co-director of the Shakespeare Centre, China. His research focuses not only on Shakespeare’s own works but on how they have been creatively adapted by actors, scholars, directors, philosophers, composers, critics, and artists across time and space. His lecturing and research on Shakespeare have so far taken him to over 30 different countries; in 2020 he was awarded the Craiova International Shakespeare Prize in Romania, and he holds Romanian and Swedish honorary degrees, an honorary membership of the Ukrainian Shakespeare Centre, and an honorary professorship at Henan Normal University in China. He works as a frequent consultant to theatre directors and actors producing Shakespeare’s plays.  His books include The Making of the National Poet (1992), The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (with Stanley Wells, 2001), England’s Elizabeth (with Nicola Watson, 2002), Performing Shakespeare’s Tragedies Today (2006) and Shakespeare and Amateur Performance (2011).