Dr Rory Loughnane

Dr Rory Loughnane is Reader in Early Modern Studies. His research and teaching interests draw together studies in Shakespeare and early modern drama, textual editing, authorship, intellectual history, theatre history, digital humanities, literary criticism, and biography. 

Current Projects

• Shakespeare At Thirty (Princeton University Press, forthcoming). A monograph about Shakespeare’s beginnings in theatre.
• Editing Archipelagic Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). A monograph co-authored with Willy Maley about character names and editing.
• The Oxford Marlowe: Collected Works (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), gen. ed. Rory Loughnane and Catherine Richardson. A new multi-volume digital and print edition of the works of Christopher Marlowe. For more information, see the project website. Related Digital Humanities research activities include the Reassembling Marlowe project, the Materializing Marlowe project (with Laura Estill), and the development of a Marlowe Walking Tour app for Canterbury.
• The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Early Modern Authorship (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), ed. Rory Loughnane and Will Sharpe. A 40+ essay collection.
• The Works of Cyril Tourneur, The Revels Plays (Manchester University Press, forthcoming), ed. Rory Loughnane. The first edition of Tourneur’s works since 1930.

He is represented by Eleanor Birne at RCW Literary Agency.

Dr Loughnane is an Associate Editor of The New Oxford Shakespeare, editing more than ten of Shakespeare’s plays for the edition. Plays he has edited, in both original and modern spelling, include 2 Henry VI, Edward III, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, Henry V, All’s Well that Ends Well, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The Tempest, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. For the Authorship Companion to the edition, he co-authored with Gary Taylor a book-length study about ‘The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare’s works’ and, in a series of attribution studies, he first identified Thomas Middleton as adapter of All’s Well that Ends Well. He is currently editing The Spanish Tragedy and Q1 Othello for the forthcoming Alternative Versions volume.

He has published extensively in early modern studies, including the landmark critical anthologies The Memory Arts in Renaissance England (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and The Death Arts in Renaissance England (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Other major publications include Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613 (Cambridge University Press, 2013; re-issued 2015), Celtic Shakespeare: The Bard and the Borderers (Ashgate, 2013; re-issued 2017), Staged Transgression in Shakespeare’s England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), The Yearbook of English Studies: Caroline Literature (MHRA, 2014), Staged Normality in Shakespeare’s England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Early Shakespeare, 1588-1594 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Memory and Mortality in Renaissance England (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He recently guest-edited special issues of IASEMS (2023) and The Journal of Marlowe Studies (2024) In addition, he has published more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. 

Dr Loughnane would welcome the opportunity to speak to any prospective postgraduate students interested in the following areas of early modern studies (1500-1700):

• Early Modern Literature and Drama
• Editing and Editorial Theory
• Authorship (practices of, attribution studies)
• History of Ideas (memory, death, love, rhetoric, conduct)
• Literary Criticism (transgression and normality; nationality and nationhood; feminism and gender studies)
• History of the Book
• Digital Humanities

In particular, he would be interested in speaking with applicants who have research interests related to the works of Christopher Marlowe.    

Awards and Fellowships

In 2017 he was awarded the Faculty of Humanities Prize for Starting Research for his contribution to The New Oxford Shakespeare edition. In 2019 he was awarded the Charles and Rose G. Hoffman Prize for distinguished work in Marlowe studies. In 2020 he was a Francis Bacon Foundation Fellow at The Huntington Library, California. In 2022 he was elected a Plumer Visiting Fellow at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, and a Visiting Professor in Early Modern Studies and Digital Humanities at La Sapienza, Rome. In 2024 he was elected a Visiting Fellow at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, and returned to La Sapienza to deliver a Visiting Professor series of talks. His research activity is or has been supported by funding bodies such as the IRC, AHRC, ESRC, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Service

He serves as a General Editor of The Revels Plays series for Manchester University Press. He also co-edits two monograph series: Studies in Early Modern Authorship for Routledge, with Laurie Maguire and Heather A. Hirschfeld; and Shakespeare and Text for Cambridge University Press, with Claire M. L. Bourne. He and Brett Greatley-Hirsch are General Editors of CADRE: Co-Authored Drama in Renaissance England, a database about co-authored plays and entertainments. He serves on the Editorial Board of Authorship and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Academic History

Born and raised in Co. Clare, Republic of Ireland, he undertook BA and PhD studies at Trinity College Dublin. He was then awarded an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the same university, which he cut short to join Syracuse University as a Visiting Assistant Professor. He next moved to Indiana University-Indianapolis to join the New Oxford Shakespeare editorial team. He joined the University of Kent in the autumn of 2016. Dr Loughnane is a dual citizen of the Republic of Ireland and the USA.