Professor Kiernan Ryan

Kiernan Ryan was educated at the University of Cambridge, winning a Scholarship to Christ’s College (1968-71), where he took a First in English, and then moving to Corpus Christi College (1971-5) to teach and to undertake research on Renaissance literature. He was a lecturer at the University of Geneva (1975-80) and at Wadham College, Oxford (1980-1) before taking up the post of Fellow and Director of Studies in English at New Hall, Cambridge (1981-97). He was awarded a doctorate by the Universiteit van Amsterdam in 1995. In 1997 he was appointed Professor of English Language and Literature and Head of Department at Royal Holloway, University of London; in the same year he was elected to an Emeritus Fellowship of New Hall.

Professor Ryan has been invited to lecture on Shakespeare, literary theory and modern British fiction by universities throughout Europe (Germany, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland), in Egypt, Mexico and in the United States. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a founding Fellow of the English Association, and a member of the International Association of University Professors of English, the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, the Shakespeare Association of America and the International Shakespeare Association. He is also a founder member of the International Walter Benjamin Association and on the editorial board of the Benjamin Bulletin.

Professor Ryan’s broadcasting experience includes numerous contributions to BBC Radio 4 arts programmes, the Open University/BBC TV series, Shakespeare: Text and Performance, for which he was the Editorial Consultant, and the interactive commentary for BBC 4’s live TV broadcast of Measure for Measure from Shakespeare’s Globe in 2004. He has also written for The Guardian and is a regular book reviewer for the Independent on Sunday and the Times Higher Education Supplement. He designed and directs the Shakespeare MA launched at Royal Holloway in 1998 and is a member of the editorial board of Shakespeare: Journal of the British Shakespeare Association.