Our new Director of Research, Professor Robert Shaughnessy, joined us in September from the University of Kent. He is a theatre historian who has published extensively on Shakespeare in performance, as well as on Shakespeare’s contemporaries, eighteenth century theatre, and performers ranging from Sarah Siddons to Johnny Cash. His publications include Representing Shakespeare (1994), The Shakespeare Effect (2002) and The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Popular Culture (2007), and he brings with him his latest book, Shakespeare in Performance: As You Like It, for Manchester University Press, a stage and screen history of the play in the United Kingdom and Europe. Robert is also involved with Shakespeare in applied performance settings, focusing in particular on work with autistic young people.