Dr Callan Davies

I grew up in Medway in Kent and studied my BA at the University of Exeter, where I became acquainted with and curious about the strange playworlds of the early modern stage and the culture that produced them. Following an M.Phil in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, I returned to Exeter to study for my PhD on early modern drama, special effects, and moral philosophy. 

I left Exeter to take up a postdoctoral position on Before Shakespeare at the University of Roehampton, where I stayed for three years, before joining the Middling Culture project at Kent. I returned to Roehampton to the Box Office Bears project.

In 2022, I joined UK Parliament's Heritage Collections team, where I worked as research and engagement assistant manager. In this role, I learnt about collections management and heritage practice; I was focused on working with colleagues to increase research about the collections and widen knowledge about and access to them. I then joined Southampton in 2023.

I have taught at the universities of Exeter, Bath Spa, Roehampton, and Kent, and as a Globe Education Lecturer at Shakespeare's Globe.  

Research:

Dr Callan Davies works across early modern literary, cultural, and theatre history; he is Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton. His new book, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620, is an accessible account of the playhouse across early modern England (2023).  He’s part of the Box Office Bears project (researching animal sports in early modern England), as well as the Middling Culture team examining early modern status, creativity, writing, and material culture, and the Before Shakespeare team. He is the Editor of the Curtain playhouse records for Records of Early English Drama’s Records of Early English Drama REED London Online and is on the advisory board for the journal Early Theatre. His first monograph, Strangeness in Jacobean Drama (2021), was shortlisted for the Shakespeare's Globe Book Award 2023. His article on bowling alleys and playhouses in sixteenth century London for Early Theatre won the MRDS Barbara Palmer Award 2020, and he has pieces recently released or forthcoming on middling community and Bristol’s Wine Street playhouse for English Historical Review; prose and playing for The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Nashe; a recently-published collection on early modern ephemera with Hannah Lilley and Catherine Richardson; and the introduction for the new Oxford World's Classics The Merry Wives of Windsor.