Professor David Roberts

Professor of English

School of English
Email:
david.roberts@bcu.ac.uk

David's research interests are in theatre and the history and practice of life writing. Publications include monographs for Oxford University Press, Methuen, Palgrave, and Cambridge University Press. He has also worked on major editions of classic texts, most recently of Congreve's The Way of the World (Methuen, 2020) and Colley Cibber's Apology (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

His latest book is a history of the Royal Shakespeare Company's engagement with Restoration Drama (Palgrave, 2024). He has also written textbooks, novels, and numerous articles for learned journals and essay collections, most recently for The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Music (2022), The Oxford Handbook of Restoration Literature (2024), and The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship (2024). David is a National Teaching Fellow and Fellow of the English Association.

David taught at the Universities of Bristol and Oxford before a five-year stint working in Japan, where he worked for the Universities of Kyoto and Osaka as well as lecturing for the British Council. He returned to the UK to teach at the University of Worcester, also lecturing part-time at the University of Warwick, before being appointed Head of English at Birmingham City University.

His subsequent period as Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of Arts, Design and Media featured many highlights: the building of the new Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, the expansion of the Queen's Award-winning Birmingham School of Jewellery, and the development of a research culture that saw four units of assessment achieve an average rating of 'internationally excellent' in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

Today he remains a part-time Professor of English at BCU, a role he combines with that of University Orator.

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