Welcome to The Shakespeare Institute, the
specialist research department of the
University of Birmingham ingeniously
hidden away in Stratford-Upon-Avon.
This is a little film just to show you some
of what goes on at the most vibrant
research community in early modern
studies.
Its status at the forefront of Shakespeare
studies was a major factor
in deciding to do my MA here.
I couldn't find a place more thoroughly devoted
to
that period and with such great
resources. So I'm sat in the library here
and there's more Shakespeare books here
than you'd find anywhere else in the
country, with a whole load of lecturers
and professors who are complete
specialists in that field.
I think that the
Shakespeare Institute has a really
relaxed atmosphere so it's a great place
to study, it's a great community and
everyone has such different research
topics. It's a great place to socialise
and share ideas amongst each other.
The Institute is home to four masters
programmes - Shakespearean and Theatre,
Shakespeare and Education, Shakespeare
Studies and Shakespeare and Creativity -
as well as to a large community of
PhD students and many of these programmes
can be taken by distance learning.
Although we're based in this little
provincial town in the English Midlands
were very much an international
institution. As well as our collaboration
here with the Royal Shakespeare Company,
we have close research collaborations
with Nanjing University in China, with
Waseda University in Tokyo and with the
National University of
Singapore.
Nowhere else really in the
world would I imagine that we can have
the sort of world quality interaction
with a theatre company of the RSC's
stature.
I think the students now get to
work in world-class spaces with
world-class artists and have access to
that knowledge and that
opportunity for development.
Every week
during term-time the entire community gets
together in the hall to hear from the
distinguished guest speaker and in
recent years some of those guests have
included some of our honorary fellows,
both academics and theatre practitioners.
There's also Britgrad the annual
British Graduate Shakespeare Conference -
so this is the largest conference for
postgraduate students in the field and
the Shakespeare Institute players put on
shows every term. So you can be involved in
the shows - you can do music, or design, or
be an actor and we also get
the chance to go and see them - there's also
weekly
play readings where you can go and read plays
from the period that are not
Shakespeare because we do other things here
as well.
I think it's a really rare
opportunity and it's such a great place
to study Shakespeare and the
collaboration and the connections
between the Royal Shakespeare Company
and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and
The Shakespeare Institute - it's just an
invaluable place to study
