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St Catherine's College

Professor Kirsten E Shepherd

Professor of English and Theatre Studies; Tutorial Fellow, St Catherine's College

Professor Kirsten E Shepherd is a scholar of modern drama and theatre studies with a particular interest in the relationship between theatre and science and also with expertise in the plays of Henrik Ibsen. She founded several pioneering projects in the Digital Humanities, including LitHits, which engages readers with literature through short, lightly curated excerpts and is also part of a broader interest in how to break down barriers to reading. In addition, Professor Shepherd created 'Pulling Up Stakes', a project that explores the intersection of immigration, homesteading, women's work and women's writing in Canada in the early 20th century through the prism of her great grandmother, Fanny Shepherd. She works closely with theatre companies and is a regular contributor to radio and podcasts. 

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Academic profiles

Faculty of English

LitHits

About

Professor Kirsten E Shepherd's main research interests lie within drama and theatre studies: the interaction between theatre and science; the writings of Henrik Ibsen; and the relationship between modernism and theatrical performance. Her most recent publication is the new Oxford World's Classics volume containing Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Laura Kieler's Men of Honour and Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken (OUP, 2025), which tells the story of the real woman who was the unwitting basis for Ibsen's A Doll's House and presents her own play to English-speaking readers for the first time. Professor Shepherd has also published The Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science (2020), Modern Drama: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2016), Twentieth-Century Approaches to Literature: Late Victorian into Modern (OUP, 2016, co-edited with Laura Marcus and Michele Mendelssohn) and numerous book chapters and articles in all three of these research fields.

With regard to theatre and science, Professor Shepherd's book Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett (Columbia University Press, 2015), which was supported by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2011-12, traces how the central ideas of evolutionary theory have made their way onto the stage, either directly or indirectly, since the 1820s. This work on theatrical engagements with evolutionary ideas stems from her second book, Science on Stage: From Doctor Faustus to Copenhagen (Princeton University Press, 2006; paperback 2012), and from the session she organized and chaired on 'Darwin and the Stage' for the international Darwin Festival in Cambridge (2009). Professor Shepherd has also published articles on theatre and science in Women: A Cultural Review, American Scientist, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Physics World, Nature and Gramma, and together with Dr Carina Bartleet co-edited two special issues of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews (December 2013 and September 2014) on 'New Directions in Theatre and Science'. Professor Shepherd's chapter on 19th-century theatre's engagements with mechanisms of transmission appears in Theatres of Contagion, ed. Fintan Walsh (2019). Professor Shepherd is also developing a research interest in theatre, technology and backstage labour, and gave a keynote address on this topic at the 2018 conference of the British Society for Literature and Science. A chapter based on this material appears in her Cambridge Companion to Theatre and Science. Professor Shepherd has also published two articles on theatre and climate change with Dr Hannah Simpson (2022 and 2023).

Professor Shepherd's work on Ibsen and on theatrical modernism began with her first book, Ibsen and Early Modernist Theatre, 1890-1900 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), a comparison of the first British and French productions of Ibsen’s plays and the critical responses to them in relation to modernism and the avant-garde theatre. Since then, she has continued to explore the role of theatrical performance within the modernist movement, for example looking at the use of scent in the Théâtre d’Art’s synaesthetic production of Song of Songs in 1891 (Theatre Research International), analyzing Edvard Munch’s set designs for Ibsen plays produced by Max Reinhardt (Nordic Theatre Studies), rethinking Ibsen’s 'globalism' (Ibsen Studies) and reconsidering Joyce’s play Exiles within its theatrical context (Theatre Research International). Professor Shepherd was a guest on Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time in May 2018 discussing Ibsen and she works regularly with theatre companies on productions of Ibsen's plays as well as contributing several podcasts to The Play Podcast series.

Expertise

  • Modern drama, theatre and performance
  • The plays of Henrik Ibsen
  • 19th century British literature (including American)
  • 20th century literature (British, American, European), especially Modernism
  • Literature and science
  • Theatre and science
  • Scandinavian/Nordic literature and culture, especially Denmark and Norway
  • Entrepreneurship and innovation (based on her founding of the spinout LitHits)

Selected publications

Media experience

Professor Kirsten E Shepherd has extensive experience of working with the media including numerous interviews for the BBC. In addition to the examples opposite, Professor Shepherd was a guest panellist on BBC Radio 3: Proms Extra for a discussion about Carl Nielsen (2017), was a guest on Material World, hosted by Matthew Sweet, talking about 'the science play' and Science on Stage (2006) and on Night Waves with Mark Lawson, discussing science plays (BBC Radio 3, 2006).

Recent media work

Languages

English, Danish, Norwegian (intermediate French)