Emma and David will discuss their own experiences of being LGBTQ+ in Oxford.

Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford and best-selling author of ‘Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers’ and ‘This Is Shakespeare’. Educated at a state school in Worcester’s outreach link region of West Yorkshire, Emma studied at Somerville College before being elected a Prize Fellow at All Souls College.

Her research combines a range of approaches to Shakespeare and early modern drama, much of it about the reception of Shakespeare in performance, print, and criticism. She is also interested in drama in performance, in the methodology of writing about theatre, in reviewing and its rhetoric, and in productive analogies between cinema, film theory, and early modern performance. She edits the Cambridge University Press journal Shakespeare Survey. Her work also includes collaborations with theatre companies including the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre and Donmar Warehouse. She has also appeared on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4 and served as a consultant for TV and film.