David McInnis

Biography

David McInnis is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne. His major scholarly books include Shakespeare and Lost Plays (Cambridge UP, 2021), Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England (Palgrave, 2013), and the Revels Plays edition of Dekker’s Old Fortunatus (Manchester UP, 2020). Since 2009, he has co-edited the Lost Plays Database, which he founded with Roslyn L. Knutson. He has also edited a number of books, including Lost Plays in Shakespeare’s England (Palgrave, 2014; co-edited with Matthew Steggle) and a sequel volume, Loss and the Literary Culture of Shakespeare’s Time (Palgrave, 2020; co-edited with Knutson and Steggle); Travel and Drama in Early Modern England: The Journeying Play (Cambridge UP, 2018; co-edited with Claire Jowitt); Tamburlaine: A Critical Reader (Arden Early Modern Drama Guides, 2020); and Shakespeare and Virtual Reality (Cambridge UP, 2021, with Stephen Wittek).

In 2016 he was jointly awarded the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ Max Crawford Medal. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Guardian, the BBC, and elsewhere. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK) in 2022 for his research in theatre history, and in 2023 he was appointed to the Board of Directors for Bell Shakespeare, Australia’s national theatre company specialising in the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He is currently editing Abdelazer for the Cambridge Behn; Timon of Athens for the Arden Shakespeare 4th series; and (with Claire Bourne) the Tamburlaine plays for the Oxford Marlowe.