Catz Fellow Leads Landmark Project on European Theatre
St Catherine’s College is delighted to announce that Professor Kirsten E. Shepherd, Catz Fellow and Professor of English and Theatre Studies, has recently edited a ground-breaking new volume of plays, which will be spotlighted in an upcoming TORCH events.
On Wednesday, 26th November, TORCH will mark the publication of a new Oxford World Classics volume as part of its landmark Book at Lunchtime series. The new edition brings together Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and When We Dead Awaken, as well as the first English translation of Laura Kieler’s Men of Honour. These plays collectively shine new light on the real woman behind Ibsen’s famous play A Doll’s House.
Professor Shepherd is the lead editor of the volume, collaborating with DPhil candidate Tzen Sam and literary translator Gaye Kynoch to produce new English versions of the three plays.
The three editors are also partnering with Breach Theatre to produce a new play about Laura Kieler that will premiere in October 2026 at the Schwarzman Humanities Centre in Oxford. The play is called Burning Down the House and builds directly on the research by Professor Shepherd, Tzen Sam, and Gaye Kynoch to reimagine Kieler’s story as a stage performance.
Throughout her career, Professor Shepherd has been committed to combining her research specialisms with public engagement. This has previously been highlighted by her appointment as Knowledge Exchange Champion at the University of Oxford, and, most recently, by the award of an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bergen. This new achievement is the pinnacle of such a mission. In an interview with TORCH, she explains that by bringing Kieler’s own writing into English translation, the project intends to “introduce a new writer, a woman writer” and to prompt fresh conversations about authorship, gender and legacy for a new age.
You are warmly encouraged to attend this exciting session of Book at Lunchtime, and you can secure your place here.
Professor Kirsten Shepherd
Professor Kirsten E. Shepherd is a Catz Fellow in English and a Professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Oxford, where she specialises in modern drama, Ibsen studies, and the relationship between science and performance. At Catz she teaches the Victorian and Modern literature. Her work spans major cross-disciplinary initiatives across the humanities, and she has been recognised for her remarkable work with numerous titles and professional appointments. These span knowledge exchange, literary innovation, and public-facing theatre research.
She is the founder of LitHits, a digital reading project that breaks down barriers to reading through short, unabridged, lightly curated excerpts from literature in a weekly newsletter: https://lithits.substack.com/
At the University of Oxford, she contributes to the teaching and development of drama and performance studies, supervises research at undergraduate and graduate levels, and leads significant scholarly projects such as the just-published Oxford World’s Classics edition of A Doll’s House, Men of Honour, When We Dead Awaken. She also collaborates closely with theatre practitioners and cultural organisations, serving as an advisor and research partner while maintaining active research interests in modern drama, theatre history, scientific discourse in the arts, and women’s writing.
Image courtesy of Faculty of English