Professor Pascale Aebischer (she/her)

Pascale Aebischer is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Performance Studies. Her current research focuses on Shakespeare and Peele's Titus Andronicus and also on the performing arts sector and digital live performance during and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her academic background is rooted in the history of the performance of early modern drama (including Shakespeare), with an emphasis on 1580s-1700 and 1980s-present. She has a particular interest in bodies and performance technologies (from candlelight through social media to 'live' theatre broadcast and digital performance). These interests are reflected in her teaching, which focuses on early modern - Restoration theatrical cultures and performance practices, Shakespeare, and present-day performance on stages and screens.

From 2021 to 2023, Pascale led the coordination of the AHRC's Covid-19 research portfolio as Principal Investigator of The Pandemic and Beyond: the Arts and Humanities Contribution to Covid Research and Recovery. Her work on this project was recognised in the June 2023 King's Birthday Honours List with an MBE for 'Services to Economic and Societal Resilience during Covid-19'. From 2023 to 2024 she was the co-lead, with Dr Karen Gray (Bristol), of Pandemic Preparedness in the Live Performing Arts: Lessons to Learn from COVID-19 (British Academy).

She has served as Director of Education and Head of Department for the Department of English and Film.

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Student Office Hours: sign up for a 10-minute slot here; book two consecutive slots if you think you'll need more time. There are no office hours outside term-time. 

Please note that Pascale Aebischer works part-time, at 80%. Working pattern: Monday-Thursday, 8.30am-4.30pm.

Social media (private, own opinions): decreasingly Twitter @PascaleExeter; increasingly Bluesky @pascaleexeter.bsky.social; LinkedIn.

Personal Biography:

I grew up in Bern (Switzerland), where I spoke French at home and Swiss German with my friends. I interrupted my Combined Honours degree in English and French Literature at the University of Bern for one year in 1990-91 so as to study for a Postgraduate Diploma in Performing Arts at the London Academy of Performing Arts. This experience inspired me to start a theatre company at the University of Bern and to celebrate the end of my degree with a staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

In 1996, I was awarded a Berrow Scholarship to allow me to study for an M.St and a DPhil at Lincoln College, Oxford. While there, I staged a production of the First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet with my fellow-students and took advantage of the proximity of Stratford-upon-Avon to spend a lot of time in the theatre and even more time in the Shakespeare Centre's archives.

Upon completion of my DPhil, I took up a Research Fellowship at Darwin College, Cambridge, with the support of a Research Fellowship for Advanced Researchers from the Swiss National Science Foundation. For the next three years, I combined work on Henry Green and on my first book with teaching the early modern syllabus for colleges in Oxford and Cambridge. In 2001, I also had the opportunity to work with colleagues at Anglia Ruskin University to organise Scaena: Shakespeare and His Contemporaries in Performance, a large international conference.

My first two years as a lecturer were spent in Leicester, which was tremendous fun and a very important stepping-stone towards my move to Exeter, where I've been since 2004.

Since arriving in Exeter, I've had two children and have written books on Jacobean drama, film adaptations of early modern plays, performance technologies and about how Shakespeare went 'viral' during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2012 and 2017, I was General Editor of Shakespeare Bulletin. I have done stints as the Director of Education and the Head of English.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I led a project on the digital transformation of Creation Theatre (Oxford) and then went on to lead the co-ordination of the AHRC's portfolio of COVID-19 research across the UK, working with researchers in over 70 teams to bring their findings to the attention of media and decision-makers. The work of my team which included academic and professional services colleagues as well as some brilliant student interns and Digital Humanities Lab staff, was rewarded with an MBE for 'services to economic and societal resilience during COVID-19' - an individual honour I wish I knew how to share with all the Arts and Humanities colleagues across the UK who worked so tirelessly throughout the pandemic to do their bit to help out. I then went on to co-lead, with Karen Gray (Bristol) a policy-oriented project that compared how the responses to COVID-19 in the G7 countries have impacted on the live performing arts, and what lessons can be learned for future crisis resilience in the sector.

I am now focusing my attention on a project related to Shakespeare and Peele's Titus Andronicus, concentrating on how this play resonates today in a decolonial environment marked by migration, imperial and religious conflict, teenage sexual violence, and the large-scale use of rape in warfare.

I teach mainly for the Department of English and Creative Writing but take a vivid interest in Drama and Film.