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Staff Profile

Dr Saffron Vickers Walkling

Senior Lecturer in English Literature

  • BA degree in English Literature and Language (UCL)
  • MA degree in English Renaissance Literature (York)
  • Doctorate in English and Related Literature (York)

I taught for a total of 5 years at Shandong University in the People's Republic of China before coming to York St John University in 2004 to work in the Department of English Literature. I have a First Class BA degree in English Literature and Language from UCL, and an MA degree with Distinction in English Renaissance Literature from the University of York, specialising in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and its sources.

My main research area is in Intercultural Shakespeare Performance and I am currently working on late communist, post-communist and post-modern appropriations of Shakespeare's Hamlet in China, Poland and the Arab world. I have published and presented at international conferences on the work of Lin Zhaohua, Jan Klata, Monika Pęcikiewicz and Sulayman Al-Bassam among others. I was included as one of the 11 York based researchers cited in the successful bid for York to become a UNESCO City of Media Arts 2015. I have taken part in the Erasmus Teaching Mobility Programme.

I am engaged with the York International Shakespeare Festival, hosting 2 Popular Shakespeare events during the inaugural Festival in 2015, and am involved in the latest festival. I have organised various international pedagogical and cultural events at York St John University. These have included China Week in 2008, coinciding with local and national events around the Beijing Olympics, and events during International Weeks. I am also a founding supporter of the Shakespeare in Performance series of conferences attached to the International Shakespeare Festival, Craiova, Romania (since 2010).

I am interested in broader issues of diversity and inclusion and have completed Stonewall training for the University. I am also interested in dyslexia and dyspraxia.

Further information

Publications and papers

Articles

Ophelia’s terror: anatomising the figure of the female suicide bomber in The Al-Hamlet Summit. Cahiers Élisabéthains, 2019.

Full of noises: when ‘World Shakespeare’ met the ‘Arab Spring Shakespeare Volume 12 3, 2016 with Margaret Litvin and Raphael Cormack.

A Chinese Coriolanus and British Reception: A Play Out of Context Multicultural Shakespeare Vol 11 Issue 26, 2014.

Review of Shakespeare and APAs Macbeth: Leila and Ben - A Bloody History Shakespeare Vol 9 Issue 3, 2013, with Raphael Cormack.

Review of Shakespeare's Hamlet directed by Monika Pęcikiewicz. Shakespeare Vol 8 Issue 4, 2012.

Books

Denmark’s a Prison: Appropriating Modern Myths of Hamlet after 1989 selected for the collection Shakespeare and Global Mythologies, edited Aneta Mancewicz and Alexa Huang, 2018.

Blogs

Three Arabic Shakespeares, Putting Words into our Mouths in Year of Shakespeare: Blogging Shakespeare Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, June 2012.

Shakespeare Travels: https://saffronatstudy.wordpress.com

Conferences and events

Blogging Workshop, York International Shakespeare Festival, May 2019, York St John University.

'"Frailty, thy name is woman": Gender Norms in the Post-1989 Political Hamlets of Lin Zhaohua and Jan Klata', European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA), Rome, July 2019.

Ophelia’s terror: anatomising the figure of the female suicide bomber in The Al-Hamlet Summit, European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA), Gdansk, July 2017.

Hosting/Introducing/Q&A: Coriolanus performed by Titus Theatre Group, Iran (screening) York International Shakespeare Festival, May 2017, York St John University.

Performing Shakespeare Workshop, York International Shakespeare Festival, May 2017, York St John University.

The worst (wo)man in the world: the Arms Dealer in Sulayman al-Bassam’s The Al-Hamlet Summit, European Directors of Shakespeare Conference, International Shakespeare Festival, Craiova, Romania, May 2016.

The Worst (Wo)Man in the World: Sulayman Al-Bassam’s The Al-Hamlet Summit, European Directors of Shakespeare Conference, International Shakespeare Festival, Craiova, Romania, May 2016.

Popular Shakespeares 1 and 2 (convenor) York International Shakespeare Festival, 2015.

Popular Shakespeares 1 and 2 (convenor) York International Shakespeare Festival, with Arne Pohlmeier, 2015, York St John University.

Macbeth: Leila and Ben – a Bloody History: ‘World Shakespeare’ Meets the ‘Arab Spring’, Everyman's Shakespeare Conference, International Shakespeare Festival, Craiova, Romania, May 2014.

Denmark's a Prison: Appropriating Modern Myths of Hamlet After 1989, Global Mythologies Seminar, European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA) annual conference, University of Montpellier, June 2013.

Lost in translation? A Western Viewer (Mis)Reads a Chinese Production of Hamlet, Shakespeare Inside-Out, British Shakespeare Association Conference, University of Lancaster, February 2012.

Hamlet and the Chinese Democracy Wall, Worldwide Hamlet in Performance and Translation Conference, International Shakespeare Festival, Craiova, Romania, April 2010.

Ophelia and the Pretty Flowers rerun (see below) International Week York St John University, March 2009.

Ophelia and the Pretty Flowers: Teaching Shakespeare in an ELT context, Crossing Continents International Shakespeare Conference, University of Nottingham, Ningbo, P. R. China, September 2008.