Alice Leonard

Email: [email protected]

I am an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Arts and Creative Cultures and a Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. 

I am an early modern literary and book historian. I specialise in the culture and history of error in early modern England. I am interested in how perceptions of error manifested and changed during this period, in epistemological contexts such as natural philosophy, travel and print. I am Co-editor on the Notebooks volume of The Complete Works of Thomas Browne (OUP). I am also working on a short book entitled Early Modern Bookspace, under contract with Cambridge University Press.

My first monograph, entitled Shakespeare in Error: Error in Shakespeare, is published with Palgrave Macmillan, see here. Its central work is to re-value error not just in the material text but as a way of interpreting Shakespeare’s literary style as heavily digressive and figurative, reconnecting error to its earlier meaning not just of mistake but wandering. It examines the different aspects of error to be found within Shakespeare's drama, including the politics of attributing error to particular social groups such as women and foreigners, and the editorial history of the treatment of error in the texts of Shakespeare. Error in Shakespeare has been reviewed in Shakespeare, Renaissance Studies and the Times Literary Supplement. You can watch the launch of my book here.

I have also published peer-reviewed articles on error in seventeenth-century science and medicine in History of Science, the material history of early modern drama in Shakespeare Survey, and the opportunities for digital humanities and textual criticism in Renaissance Drama.

I have taught widely in English Literature. I was the convener for 'Shakespeare: Text and Stage' at Warwick University CLL and 'Error and Failure in Early Modern Culture' at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. I have taught a variety of modules including 'Shakespeare and Selected Dramatists of His Time' and 'Modes of Reading' at Warwick English Department, and 'Critical Issues in Law and Management' at Warwick Business School. I am the Director of Studies for the doctoral project on 'Coventry Early Modern Grammar School', in collaboration with the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum (Coventry), fully funded by the Coventry University Trailblazers scheme, and I am supervising another PhD project on colonial legacies 1650-1800 in partnership with the Bodleian Library, Oxford University. I am mentor for a Leverhulme Research Fellowship on early modern transcultural encounter. 

I am a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 2022 I was the Byrne-Bussey Marconi Fellow in the History of Science at the Bodleian Library, Oxford University.

Before coming to Coventry University, I was a Marie Curie Cofund Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick. In September 2019 I was a Short-Term Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC. I previously held a Swiss National Science postdoctoral fellowship at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, and the position of Postdoctoral Fellow in early modern English literature at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. I received my PhD under a co-tutelle between the University of Warwick and the University of Neuchatel.