Andrew Murphy

Biography

He attended Trinity College Dublin as an undergraduate and went on to study for my MA and PhD at Brandeis University in Boston in the US. He was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire before joining the School of English at St Andrews in 1998. He has worked primarily in the fields of Shakespeare Studies and Irish Studies. His most recent book is a study of the history of Irish cultural nationalism: Ireland, Reading and Cultural Nationalism, 1790-1930: Bringing the Nation to Book, which will be published by Cambridge University Press later this year. Previous monographs include: Shakespeare for the People: Working-class Readers 1800-1900 (CUP, 2008); Shakespeare in Print: A History and Chronology of Shakespeare Publishing (CUP, 2003; second edition forthcoming 2019); But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us: Ireland, Colonialism, and Renaissance Literature (University Press of Kentucky, 1999). He served as the UK Associate Editor for the Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare (CUP, 2016). In 2015, as part of the University College Dublin/Abbey Theatre Shakespeare programme, he gave a lecture which brings together the Shakespearean and Irish strands of his work: ‘Acts of Rebellion: Shakespeare and the 1916 Rising’ — a podcast of the lecture is available. The core argument of Ireland, Reading and Cultural Nationalism is mapped out in a lecture he delivered at the Long Room Hub at Trinity College Dublin -- podcast available here.

Research Interest

His primary interests are in the fields of Irish Studies and Shakespeare Studies. He is interested specifically in the historical context of literature; theories of nationalism and how they relate to literature and culture; Irish culture, history and politics; the history of the book. He is also interested in film — and specifically in films of Shakespeare’s plays — and in the history of popular music. He is happy to supervise research in any of these areas. Former PhD students have worked on such topics as: Seamus Heaney’s poetics; the configuration and reception of Shakespeare’ sonnets; nationalism and early modern literature; film versions of Othello.