“I hope to provide an impression of how specular instruments changed the scopic regime of early modernity. My aim is to contribute to the conference's focus on modes of surveillance and observation by showing how popular narratives circulating around 1600 established mirrors as legendary tools of imperial monitoring in their readers' minds and how Shakespeare took up elements of their plot structures in Richard II and Macbeth."

Thanks for joining the BritGrad Blog for our interview introduction with Dr. Kelsey Ridge. Dr. Ridge is currently an adjunct at Alvernia University. She is an alum of the Shakespeare Institute and the author of Shakespeare's Military Spouses and Twenty-First-Century Warfare (Routledge 2021), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Shakespeare (Routledge 2025), and Shakespeare and Trauma Theory (Arden 2026).

On a sunny afternoon in May, barely a month before BritGrad, I sat down with Dr Rebecca Yearling to talk about her upcoming plenary about Shakespeare and Violence.

“You can't write like this”. Why not? “Because that's not how it's done”. Okay, well, who does how it's done serve? Who benefits from that? Whose disadvantages? When you do it “neutrally”, when you take ‘I’ and ‘me’ out of it, you're just telling a story of white supremacy, you're telling a story of colonization, you're telling a story of imperialism and slave-owning and all these types of things. And I just want to tell different stories.

Dr. Erin Sullivan is a Reader of Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Institute (SI), University of Birmingham. I spoke with Dr. Sullivan, to gain some insight into her career and how her research intersects with this year’s conference.

Stratford-upon-Avon is a relatively small town, but it has a lot going on - especially in June. With the Royal Shakespeare Company hosting major productions (including The Tempest starring Sir Kenneth Branagh), accommodation can book up quickly. We strongly recommend securing your stay sooner rather than later.

The core of any academic conference is its theme. A particular subject or focus area specially chosen for each conference which shapes the entire event. But what exactly is a conference theme, and why does it matter? The chosen theme acts as both a framework for the conference and an invitation for response. It’s a call to action, if you will, to both delegates, auditors, and plenaries. It narrows the subject area of the conference ever so slightly to produce direction for

Your abstract is a vital part of the BritGrad application process as it indicates to the committee what research you’d like to share. BritGrad is a student friendly conference but nevertheless competitive, showcasing delegates from across the world, so your abstract is your 'sales pitch' to present. It tells us why we should pick you and platform your work at the event. It has to grab our attention, offer a flavour of your work, and emphasise its unique selling points.

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