Professor Paulina Kewes
Professor of English Literature; Fellow, Jesus College
Professor Paulina Kewes' research interests include English Renaissance drama; Shakespeare; Tudor and Stuart history, notably Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor and Elizabeth I; the royal succession; parliamentary culture in the early modern world; and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
About
A literary scholar by training, Professor Paulina Kewes has published extensively across the fields of literature and history – political, religious and intellectual – as well as traditional boundaries of period and language. Her work on early modern drama, historiography, plagiarism, classical translation, Tudor and Stuart history and parliamentary culture is regularly cited by both literary critics and historians, and features prominently in syllabi in both fields.
She is currently completing two books, both for Oxford University Press. Contesting the Royal Succession in Reformation England, Pole to Shakespeare will be the first interdisciplinary study of the fierce succession debate, which dominated the period from Henry VIII’s death in 1547 to the accession of James VI/I and union of the English and Scottish crowns in 1603, from a comparative British and European perspective. Spanning the reigns of the last three Tudors – evangelical Edward VI, Catholic Mary I and Protestant Elizabeth I, the monograph charts the emergence of new political theories, notably elective monarchy, culminating in an innovative interpretation of Hamlet.
Professor Kewes is also working on Parliamentary Culture Compared: Poland-Lithuania and the Kingdoms of Britain and Ireland, c. 1490-1720. With each chapter written by a team of scholars who have worked extensively on the different jurisdictions involved, this transnational, interdisciplinary book explores these multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-faith polities through their representative assemblies, comparing and assessing their changing parliamentary cultures.
Expertise
- Shakespearian history plays
- Tudor and Stuart history
- Elizabeth I
- The royal succession
- Early modern parliamentary culture
- The excommunication of Henry VIII
Selected publications
- Joint Iconography for Joint Sovereigns: Mary Queen of Scots, James VI of Scotland, and the Campaign for Association, c. 1578-1584 (2026)
- Parliamentary Culture and Indigenous Traditions of Assembly in the Americas and South and East Asia, c.1500–1700: Comparative Perspectives (2025)
- Towards a History of Parliamentary Culture in the Early Modern World: Concept, Geopolitical Scope, and Method (2024)
- Representative Assemblies in the Political Thought of Jean Bodin (2024)
- Ancient Rome and Political Culture in Early Modern England (2020)
- Stuart Succession Literature: Moments and Transformations (2018)
- Doubtful and Dangerous: The Question of Succession in Late Elizabethan England (2014)
- The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles (2013)
Media experience
Professor Kewes has experience of working with the media.
Recent media work
Languages
English, Polish