Doctor Callan Davies

Dr Callan Davies

Lecturer in 17th Century Lit and Culture

Research interests

  • The history of play, playhouses, and commercial entertainment spaces
  • Early modern drama and performance
  • Social status and creativity in early modern England

More research

Accepting applications from PhD students.

Connect with Callan

ÃÛÌÒTV

Dr (FSA, FRHistS) works across early modern literary, cultural, and theatre history; he is Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture at the ÃÛÌÒTV. His new book, , is an accessible account of the playhouse across early modern England; it featured as one of History Today's Books of the Year 2023. He is currently writing a popular history for Yale (c. 2028): Curtain: The Story of a Shakespearean Playhouse.

He’s part of the project (researching animal sports in early modern England), as well as the  team examining early modern status, creativity, writing, and material culture, and the team. He is the Editor of the Curtain playhouse records for Records of Early English Drama’s Records of Early English Drama REED London Online and is international collaborator on a digital mapping project (Shakespeare's Theaterscape) with US colleagues funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities. He is on the advisory board for the journal Early Theatre, and he is academic advisor for the opening in 2025.

His first monograph, (2021), was shortlisted for the Shakespeare's Globe Book Award 2023. His article on  in sixteenth century London for Early Theatre won the MRDS Barbara Palmer Award 2020, and he has pieces recently released or forthcoming on middling community and ; prose and playing for The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Nashe;  with Hannah Lilley and Catherine Richardson; and the introduction for the new Oxford World's Classics .