Background

My early years were spent in Lancashire, after which I took my BA and MA at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and my PhD at Liverpool University. My doctoral thesis was an edition of Henry Chettle’s Tragedy of Hoffman. This introduction to textual study led on to employment at Oxford University Press at the Press’s headquarters in Oxford as an academic editor for the landmark Oxford edition of Shakespeare’s Complete Works. After lecturing for five years at the University of Waikato, New Zealand, I spent a year in the Department of English Literature at Glasgow University, before being appointed to the Shakespeare Institute.

Teaching

My teaching is mainly at the Shakespeare Institute, where I convene the Shakespeare Studies programme. I teach classes for this and other MA programmes, and supervise research students. I have contributed a distance-learning module on ‘The Text of Shakespeare’ for the Shakespeare Institute’s Shakespeare and Theatre MA programme. I also contribute regularly to the teaching of Shakespeare in the English Department. I have contributed a distance-learning module on ‘The Text of Shakespeare’ for the Shakespeare Institute’s Shakespeare and Theatre programme. Outside the University, I occasionally lecture and lead post-performance discussion on short courses at the Shakespeare Centre in Stratford.

Current research students work on editorial projects, and also the development of play editing in early modern England, privacy and domestic space in the early modern theatre, Shakespeare and twins, the representation of ancient Britain in early modern drama, and metaphors of impression in Shakespeare.

Research

My research interests include bibliography, editing, textual criticism, textual theory, Renaissance theatre culture and print culture, and Shakespeare’s contemporary dramatists. I have completed an edition of the collaborative play Sir Thomas More for the Arden Shakespeare. My current research focuses on the New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works, which will be edited entirely afresh by a team headed by Gary Taylor, John Jowett, and Terri Bourus. This will take several years.

Research Group(s)

I am an Associate General Editor and major contributor to Thomas Middletons Collected Works. Along with Suzanne Gossett and Gordon McMullen, I am a general editor of Arden Early Modern Drama, a parallel series to the Arden Shakespeare that makes available non-Shakespearian drama of the early modern period; published titles include Duchess of Malfi, Philaster, 'Everyman' and 'Mankind', and The Renegado . I am also a member of the Editorial Committee of the Malone Society, and the Advisory Boards of Shakespeare Internet Editions, Shakespeare Survey, and SEDERI.

Conferences

I act as Secretary of the biennial International Shakespeare Conference held at the Shakespeare Institute. I participate regularly in the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, and occasionally in other conferences on Shakespeare, early modern literature, and textual studies, held in Britain, Europe, and elsewhere.

Interests

I am a keen walker and mountain-climber, and have completed the Scottish 'Munros' (hills over 3000 ft). I play the piano.

Selected Publications:

Thomas Middleton, Collected Works, general editors Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, associate general editors MacD.P. Jackson, John Jowett, Valerie Wayne, and Adrian Weiss; and Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, by the editors (OUP, 2007)

Shakespeare and Text (OUP, 2007)

‘Editing Shakespeare’s Plays in the Twentieth Century’, Shakespeare Survey 59 (2006), 1-19

‘From Print to Performance: Looking at the Masque in Timon of Athens’, in From Performance to Print in Shakespeare’s England, ed. Peter Holland and Stephen Orgel (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 73-91

William Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton, Timon of Athens, ed. John Jowett (OUP, 2004)

William Shakespeare, Richard III, ed. John Jowett (OUP, 2000)

William Shakespeare, Complete Works, modern-spelling and old-spelling editions, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (general editors), John Jowett and William Montgomery (associate editors) (OUP, 1986, revised edition 2005); and William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (OUP, 1987), by the editors