Plenary Interview:In Conversation with Erin Sullivan

Dr. Erin Sullivan is a Reader of Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Institute (SI), University of Birmingham. In addition to chairing the BritGrad committee during her time as a student at the SI, Dr. Sullivan is kicking off our 2026 proceedings on Thursday 18th June with some opening remarks and a brief discussion of this year’s theme: Shakespeare Under the Microscope. I spoke with Dr. Sullivan, to gain some insight into her career and how her research intersects with this year’s conference.

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Despite initially hoping to study further from home, Erin gained her English degree at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (UCN), which was only 30-minutes from her hometown. This worked out well and she benefited from studying at a great university with wonderful teachers, low tuition fees, and minimal debt. She then went on to undertake her MA at the Shakespeare Institute (BritGrad’s host organisation!) Having expected to move back home to work in the culture sector following her MA, Erin stayed in England to undertake her PhD at UCL’s Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine.

When I asked Erin what the most surprising or formative influence on her career was, she recalled her experience at the Wellcome Centre – a different disciplinary setting than she was used to. This shift, Erin explained, was “very difficult and eventually really freeing”. Initially working solely with “some extremely smart historians”, she later “managed to get a co-supervisor in English”. This introduced a challenge familiar to many interdisciplinary researchers: learning how to navigate and balance competing disciplinary expectations and methodologies. For Erin, this became a pivotal turning point in shaping her intellectual approach. She reflected:

“I often got really different sets of feedback from each department. That was

confusing at first, but it helped me realize that my job was to listen to these

different views and to figure out what I wanted to say – and defend that. It helped teach me intellectual humility and autonomy at the same time.”

Her experience offers an important lesson for new PhD students. Interdisciplinary

research can feel uncomfortable because it exposes researchers to multiple standards, assumptions, and modes of critique. This tension can also become one of its greatest strengths. Erin’s experience highlights the importance of developing the confidence to synthesise differing viewpoints, articulate one’s own position clearly, and remain open to learning in the process.

During her time studying in England, Erin explained that she in love with both research (and her husband) and ultimately decided to make the UK her home. We at the Shakespeare Institute are certainly grateful she did, as she later returned as a Professor of Shakespeare Studies. Her research now spans the history of emotion and the impact of digital technology on Shakespearean adaptation and performance.

When I asked Erin how these research interests intersect with the theme of this

year’s conference, she replied:

“In my last book, Shakespeare and Digital Performance in Practice, I thought a lot about the use of live film in theatre. One of the sections in the book is called ‘The Microscopic Gaze’; in it I write about how the camera frame objectifies its subjects through excessive closeness and uninvited intimacy. I got to write about two very different and very good productions – Joe Hill Gibbins’s Measure for Measure at the Young Vic in 2015 and Spy Monkey’s The Complete Deaths at Hull Truck in 2016.”

Erin’s discussion of the “microscopic gaze” speaks directly to the BritGrad’s focus on surveillance, highlighting acts of watching, scrutiny, interpretation, and systems of knowledge. Her work demonstrates how emerging technologies can reveal the complex ways power, observation, and meaning operate across theatrical performance and afterlives.

These questions have already emerged as a significant thread among this year’s

conference applications, with many delegates exploring gaze dynamics, surveillance, and microscopic forms of analysis within Shakespeare studies and the wider early modern world. Erin will develop these ideas further in her opening remarks for BritGrad.

After discussing her academic journey and the ways Erin’s research intersects with

BritGrad 2026’s theme, I asked her a question many Shakespeare scholars have likely been asked countless times, but one that remains endlessly fascinating: did she have a favourite Shakespeare play, character, or quotation? I was especially curious to hear whether her relationship with Shakespeare’s works had shifted over time as her research interests evolved. Erin reflected:

“It’s a cliché but it’s always the one I’m currently working on. I’m editing All’s Well That Ends Well for the Arden 4 series right now and am finding the play endlessly, endlessly fascinating. I haven’t written about it before, and it’s not one that I loved when I first read it, but the more I get into the more I’m convinced that it’s Shakespeare’s most radical experiment in the possibilities and limits of female agency”.

This reading speaks closely to several strands emerging across the conference. Many of this year’s panels engage with questions of women’s voices, gendered performance, power, and forms of resistance within Shakespeare and the wider early modern world. The conference theme has prompted important discussions about the ways surveillance cultures frequently reinforce gendered expectations and social limitations. Many delegates are exploring how performance, theatrical experimentation, and acts of speaking or being seen can challenge those structures. Those interested in these themes will find rich discussions throughout the BritGrad programme.

Finally, I asked Erin some questions relating to her published works and how they may help us consider the links between Shakespeare and different technologies of surveillance ahead of BritGrad 2026. These included the following:

Q. In your book, Beyond Melancholy, you argue that sadness is deeply embedded in the English language and central to early modern of selfhood. To what extend might emotions such as sadness function as a form of self-surveillance and selffashioning in the early modern period, and how does the theatre mediate that process?

A: “In my research for that book, I saw a lot of cases of people mapping their emotions onto the definitions of sadness, melancholy, godly sorrow, and despair that were provided by medical and religious writings at the time. Sometimes this could be liberating—a ‘diagnosis’ can create meaning and a sense of narrative progression—but in other cases it was really damaging — people had to make their unique sense of self adhere to a script written by someone else. The most exciting instances for me were where I could see people rejecting those scripts and improvising new ones.”

Q. As your work (particularly your article for Contemporary Theatre Review – ‘From Facsimiles to Films’) has explored the impact of technologies of theatrical visibility in Shakespearean adaptation, where do you see the most productive overlap and/or tension between these technologies (e.g., recording, streaming, digital circulation) and early modern practices of reading, watching, and interpreting performance?

A: “That’s such an interesting question! For me, the most important overlap is pragmatic rather than aesthetic: I’m very interested in streaming and broadcasting offering a way for classical theatre to become popular again. Shakespeare wrote for large, varied audiences, but we rarely see that kind of diversity in modern physical theatres. While it’s true that broadcast theatre tends to attract similar audiences to in-person theatre, there is also research showing that those audiences are at least a bit more diverse and certainly larger, especially when the broadcast is shared online.”

Q. Are there any recent publications, forthcoming articles, or works-in-progress you would like to highlight? Could you give us some insight into the process involved in developing this?

A: “I’m really proud of an article I published last year in Adaptation: 'Adaptation as Reception – Or, Lady Bird as The Tempest’. It was a piece that I had been thinking about for a long time, and it came out of my teaching on Shakespeare and adaptation. I wanted to try to answer the question, what happens when someone experiences a work as an adaptation, but it turns out that the people who created it never saw it that way? It allowed me to explore the idea of adaptation as a meaning-making process that audiences can participate in, and it also gave me the chance to write about Greta Gerwig’s film, which I love.”

At the end of our discussion, I asked Erin to give some parting advice to our 2026 delegates and auditors. She responded:

“Try not to be afraid to put yourself out there. Talk to people, share your work, ask questions. You never know where a new connection or idea might lead you.”

This is valuable advice whether BritGrad will be your first academic conference or

whether you are returning as a more experienced attendee. Erin’s reflections offer an encouraging reminder that conferences are not simply spaces to present finished ideas, but opportunities to test new approaches, encounter different perspectives, and develop scholarly community. We sincerely hope this is the experience you have if you’re attending BritGrad 2026!

By Eleanor Milne | BritGrad 2026 | Tuesday 19th May 2026

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We are extremely grateful to Dr. Erin Sullivan for taking the time to speak with us for the BritGrad blog ahead of the conference and are delighted that she will be opening our proceedings this year. Her research provides an exciting starting point for conversations surrounding surveillance, observation, forensic analysis, and the many ways these themes continue to shape Shakespeare studies and early modern scholarship.

Looking to attend BritGrad Conference and hear more about Dr. Sullivan’s research but have not booked your tickets yet? Grab them here.