Dr Marion O'Connor

(BA, Toronto; MPhil, PhD London)

Marion O’Connor, Reader Emerita, holds degrees from the Universities of Toronto (B.A. in English with History at St. Michael's College) and London (M.Phil. in Combined Historical Studies: the Renaissance, at the Warburg Institute;  Ph.D. in English at Bedford College).   Appointed to a lectureship at University of Kent in 1974,  she became Reader in English Drama & Theatre History in 2010,  and the title of Emeritus Reader was conferred upon her after her retirement in 2014. 

Editorial Work

O’Connor has contributed to gold-standard collected editions of  Early Modern English drama by professional playwrights --  Thomas Middleton (2007),  Richard Brome (online 2010,  print in preparation),  and  Thomas Heywood (in preparation)  -- as well as amateur scripts by women such as Rachel Fane (2006, also forthcoming 2015).    She has been General Editor of Society for Theatre  Research Publications since 2009,  after a dozen years as co-editor of the society’s journal, Theatre Notebook.    She currently serves on the Theatre Notebook editorial board and on the editorial board of  Early Theatre, the journal associated with Records of Early English Drama.

Across her decades of service at Kent, O’Connor has supervised successful research for postgraduate degrees in English, in Medieval & Tudor Studies (for which she directed the MA programme that became the postgraduate Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Studies), and  in Drama (for which she served as Director of Graduate Studies).    Much of her own research has been in theatre history:  translations and adaptations across time and/or space;  the staging of classical (especially Shakespearean) texts;   dramatic revivals and theatrical reconstructions.    Variously involved with the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre in Southwark,  she has worked extensively in Shakespeare reception studies, particularly the directorial career of William Poel.