Professor Kiernan Ryan

No Cambridge College is more welcoming, supportive and forward-looking than Murray Edwards College. No Cambridge College provides more inspirational teaching and scholarship, or fosters an academic culture more committed to the achievement of intellectual excellence by students and Fellows alike. It's a privilege to have taught here, and an honour to be an Emeritus Fellow of the College.

Degrees and honours

• MA (Cantab)
• PhD (Amsterdam)
• Emeritus Fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge
• Founding Fellow of the English Association
• Emeritus Professor of English Literature, Royal Holloway, University of London
• Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford

Research interests

• Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature
• Contemporary British Fiction
• Literary Theory

Biography

A graduate of Christ's College, Cambridge, Kiernan Ryan began his research and teaching career at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and taught at the University of Geneva and Wadham College, Oxford before taking up the post of Fellow and Director of Studies in English at New Hall (1981-97). He was appointed Professor of English Language and Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London in 1997, a position he held until his retirement as Emeritus Professor of English Literature in 2016.

Professor Ryan's publications include King Lear: Contemporary Critical Essays (1993), Ian McEwan (1994), New Historicism and Cultural Materialism (1996), Shakespeare: The Last Plays (1999), Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts (2000), Shakespeare (3rd edition, 2002), Shakespeare's Comedies (2009), Shakespeare's Universality: Here's Fine Revolution (2015) and the Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of King Lear (2015). His latest book is Shakespearean Tragedy (Bloomsbury, 2021).