Dr Amy Lidster
Lecturer; Career Development Fellow and Tutor in English
Dr Amy Lidster specializes in Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, book history, and historical and wartime cultures, with research on early modern drama, authorship, publication, performance, history writing, and the arts in wartime.
About
Dr Amy Lidster specializes in Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, book history, and historical and wartime cultures. Her research focuses on early modern drama, the ways performance practices and publication shape meaning, the writing of history, the construction of authorship, and the relationship between the arts and wartime.
A major strand of Dr Lidster’s work examines how Shakespeare has been mobilized during conflicts from the seventeenth century to the present, and the political, cultural, and ethical implications of those uses. Her publications include Wartime Shakespeare: Performing Narratives of Conflict (2023), which analyses wartime theatre and Shakespearean performance across British, American, French, German, and Iraqi contexts, and Shakespeare at War: A Material History (2023), an edited collection exploring how material objects reveal the use of the arts in shaping experiences of conflict. Dr Lidster also co-curated the exhibition Shakespeare at War at the National Army Museum, London (October 2023–September 2024).
Recent and forthcoming research investigates Shakespeare’s presence in First World War internment camps, including archival evidence of a Jamaican actor performing Hamlet at Ruhleben Camp in Germany, and explores Shakespearean tragedy in Ukraine during the ongoing Russian invasion.
A second strand of Dr Lidster’s research explores the relationship between Renaissance literature and historical culture. Her book Publishing the History Play in the Time of Shakespeare (2022) examines how the book trade has shaped understandings of historical drama. She is also developing a project on Renaissance women as writers of history.
Expertise
- Shakespeare and Renaissance drama
- Renaissance historical culture and historiography
- Book history
- Renaissance literature in English
- Wartime culture, including the use of Shakespeare during periods of conflict
Selected publications
- Shakespeare in Fragments: Culture in Captivity at Ruhleben Internment Camp (forthcoming, 2026)
- Introduction: Henry VI: Part 1 (New Oxford Shakespeare) (forthcoming, 2026)
- Visible Bullets: Shakespeare at the Ukrainian Front and Beyond (2025)
- ‘Not on his picture, but his booke’: Shakespeare’s First Folio and practices of collection (2023)
- Wartime Shakespeare: Performing Narratives of Conflict (2023)
- Shakespeare at War: A Material History (2023)
- Publishing the History Play in the Time of Shakespeare: Stationers Shaping a Genre (2022)
- Publishing King Lear (1608) at the Sign of the Pied Bull (2021)
- Challenging Monarchical Legacies in Edward III and Henry V (2019)
Media experience
Dr Amy Lidster has experience working with the media as well as taking part in public engagement events including the recent ‘First Folio Day: The Bard at the Bod’ in March 2023.