Emer McHugh is an academic, writer, and educator specialising in Shakespeare and early modern performance studies.

I am a graduate of the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham (MA) and of the Discipline of Drama and Theatre Studies at NUI Galway (BA, PhD).

My forthcoming monograph, Irish Shakespeares: Gender, Sexuality, and Performance in the Twenty-First Century (forthcoming from Routledge), stems from my Irish Research Council-funded doctoral research, which looks at modern and contemporary Shakespeare performance by Irish practitioners inside and outside of Ireland, exploring their engagement with gender, queerness, and feminisms, and exploring this in tandem with its contested relationship with issues of Irish national identity. My case studies include productions at the Abbey, Lyric, Gate, and Druid Theatres, and individuals such as Andrew Scott and Ruth Negga. I am also developing my second monograph project, Shakespeare and the Irish Actor, which looks at Irish Shakespeareans working in English Shakespearean theatres since the foundation of the Abbey Theatre and the solidification of the ‘Shakespeare industry’ in the twentieth century.

My research interests include early modern performance studies; Shakespeare and Ireland; theatre and celebrity culture; theatre history and historiography; audience and reception studies; contemporary Irish and British performance; and queer and feminist theory and performance. I am currently writing and developing articles and book chapters on Irish Shakespeare performance; Shakespeare on film and celebrity culture; and the terminologies of early modern performance studies.

I also teach undergraduates in Drama and Theatre Studies at NUI Galway, and have also taught in the Discipline of English at NUIG as well as in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin. I specialise in and have taught classes on theatre histories and historiographies; the history and practice of performing Shakespeare; global Shakespeares; film and Shakespeare; revenge tragedies; approaches to staging classical text; modern Irish theatre; and comedy in performance. (And, of course, I am always open to specialising in other areas too.)

I firmly believe in making scholarship public. I have contributed my work to Women Are Boring, Shakespeare in Ireland, and Reviewing Shakespeare. I am a frequent contributor to RTÉ Brainstorm, where I have written about popular culture, music, contemporary literature, and film. You can read my articles here.

Otherwise, I’m a big fan of the following things: my cats, reading books, St. Vincent, making Spotify playlists for my friends, Keanu Reeves, Doctor Who, massive cups of tea, everything that Jenny Lewis has ever done musically, decent veggie/vegan food, Sleater-Kinney, and Carol, which is obviously the greatest Christmas film of all time. I’m on Twitter at @emeramchugh.