BritGrad

An international conference in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama for graduate students. britgrad.com

The Twenty-Seventh Annual British Graduate Shakespeare Conference
17-19 June, 2025

16/06/2026

Two days to go till BritGrad 2026: Shakespeare Under the Microscope!

BritGrad was founded on collaboration and community - we can’t wait to be bring our delegates and auditors together with three packed days of panels, plenary talks, and social events. Have you checked out the full schedule yet?

We’re hard at work with the final arrangements… if you’re joining us this year, make sure you’ve checked your final arrangements too - your travel, tickets, and schedule!

A quick reminder - if you want to join the boat party on the final day of the conference, you’ve got two days left to grab your tickets! Head to link in bio for all the info.

11/06/2026

One week to go!

If you’re joining us in-person, we can’t wait to welcome you to Stratford-upon-Avon. And for those of you online, we’re really looking forward to meeting all of the attendees and speakers who are joining us from across the world.

Will we see you at BritGrad 2026?

07/06/2026

Our incredible 2026 Plenary Speakers!

We’re delighted to welcome this group of brilliant, field-leading experts to speak alongside our early career researchers at BritGrad.

The full schedule of plenaries, panels, workshops, and events, is now available to view on our website at britgrad.com/schedule

A note for delegates: please make sure to keep checking your emails regularly (including your spam/junk folder) for updates from us. We will be sending out some important information over the next couple of weeks - please respond as soon as you can to any task or email from our Registrar Paige!

05/06/2026

It’s your last chance to grab an in-person ticket for BritGrad 2026!

Held at the Shakespeare Institute in the Bard’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon, it’s hard to imagine a better place to gather for a Shakespeare conference!

In order to confirm catering requirements and onsite logistics, in-person ticket sales must end TODAY.

Don’t completely panic though - if you’re planning to join us online, you’ve got a little bit longer to secure your tickets.

We’ve got a fantastic schedule of field-leading plenary speakers and early-career researchers, ready to share their work. Head to our website now to book your 3-day or 1-day tickets - we can’t wait to see you there!

01/06/2026

Our final plenary announcement is the incredible Arthur Hughes! We’re so excited to be welcoming the award-winning actor to the Shakespeare Institute to discuss his role as Richard III at the RSC and disability within Shakespeare.

Arthur Hughes is a renowned British actor and performer. He graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 2013, leaving with the Carleton Hobbs radio award and a stint on the BBC Radio Drama Company. He has performed on various stages in London and around the country, including the NT, Crucible, Donmar, Almeida, Regents Park, The Globe, and the RSC for the ‘22 production of Richard III (Critics Choice Award). Screen work include work on BBC (Then Barbara Met Alan, The Jetty), ITV (Gone), C4 (Mincemeat), Netflix (The Innocents), Apple (Criminal Record), Disney (Shardlake).

Hughes’ talk, “Playing Richard III and Disability in Shakespeare”, will offer an insight into his time playing Richard III in the 2022 RSC production, notable for being the first production at the RSC with a disabled actor to play the infamous king. Focusing on Hughes’ time in Stratford, but also on the world Richard inhabits as a disabled man; the pressures and influences of a society that reviles and rejects him, and how that can shape a person’s views, and ultimately their conscience.

31/05/2026

Ready to hear about this year’s social events?

Throughout BritGrad, we host a range of in-person and online social events designed to bring delegates and auditors together. This year, almost all the events are included in the price of your conference ticket. The only event which requires you to book a ticket priced at £10, is a sunset boat ride down the River Avon on the final day of the conference. Swipe to see a little taster of what we’ve got planned for each day, or head to our website to see the full schedule and book your boat party tickets!

Obviously, we’re feeling very excited… but what are you most looking forward to?

29/05/2026

Our penultimate plenary speaker announcement is the fantastic Dr. Kelsey Ridge. An alumni of the Shakespeare Institute, we’re so excited to be welcoming her back for BritGrad 2026!

Kelsey Ridge is an adjunct at Alvernia University. She earned her PhD in Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. She is 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).

Dr Ridge will be presenting a paper titled, “take no note of him, but let him go”: Unequal surveillance in Much Ado About Nothing

It is frequently observed that Much Ado is a play about noting. Characters are observed, remarked, and gossiped about. This noting acts as a form of surveillance. However, the whos and hows of this noting are not equally distributed. Don John, Borachio, and Conrade, despite their recent antagonism to the regime, are not to surveillance. Indeed, although Don John complains of curtailments on his liberty, he has remarkable ability to control if and how he is noted. In contrast, Beatrice and especially Hero are much marked by others. When Hero is accused of sexual infidelity, the status of the surveillance on her is repeatedly invoked by accusers and defenders. Adaptations have often steered into this noting/surveillance element in the text. How these characters are surveilled speaks to the nature of Messinan civil society and our society as readers and adapters.

28/05/2026

Coming to BritGrad? Beyond the panels, throughout the conference we host a range of in-person and online social events - from informal socials and networking opportunities, to online quizzes and group activities around Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Keep your eyes peeled this week for the full social events schedule…

What do you hope to see on there this year?

25/05/2026

The next announcement for our 2026 plenary speakers is here…

We’re so pleased to be welcoming Dr Rebecca Yearling to BritGrad!

Dr Rebecca Yearling is Senior Lecturer in English at Keele University. Her research focuses upon audience response to Renaissance drama: her first monograph, ‘Ben Jonson, John Marston and Early Modern Drama: Satire and the Audience’ was published by Palgrave in 2016, and her most recent book, ‘Shakespeare’s Violence and the Early Modern Spectator’ came out with Bloomsbury Arden in 2026. She is currently working on a new project on what it means to modernise Shakespeare in performance.How did Shakespeare’s original audiences respond to the violence of his plays? What attraction or interest might scenes of violence have had for early modern spectators, and how might such scenes continue to resonate for us today? This paper explores both the challenges and the possibilities of
reconstructing early audience responses, via a mixed methodology that explores the role played by contemporary discourses surrounding violence, morality, empathy and judgement, as well as the theatrical conventions of the time and modern psychological theories about the origin and practical operation of the emotions. It also brings this issue into the 21st century, looking at the extent to which the English Renaissance debates surrounding theatrical violence and its value have continued into our own time. It ultimately makes the case that fictional violence is valuable to audiences because it tells us about ourselves: what kinds of suffering we can bear (or even enjoy) watching, what kinds we cannot, and the grounds on which we make such distinctions.

21/05/2026

Less than a month to go till BritGrad 2026…

Delegates - the deadline to register for the conference is today! If you haven’t already purchased your tickets, please head to our website now or get in touch with any issues or extenuating circumstances. We can’t wait to hear your research!

Not presenting? Don’t worry, you’ve still got another week to purchase your tickets! This year’s programme is shaping up to be a fantastic year - from our renowned plenary speakers, to our burgeoning delegates. Will you be joining us?

Address

Mason Croft, Church Street
Stratford-Upon-Avon
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Website

http://britgrad.com/

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