Fred Schurink

I was educated at the Universities of Amsterdam (MA), London (Warburg Institute, MA), and Oxford (D.Phil.). Before joining the University of Manchester in September 2014, I was a Research Associate and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Newcastle University and a Lecturer at Northumbria University in Newcastle. My research has been funded by the AHRC, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science, and I have held Fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Newberry Library, the Huntington Library, the Houghton Library at Harvard, and the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel. I am an Associate Editor of the MHRA Tudor & Stuart Translations series and serve on the Board of Advisors of Renaissance Studies (2020-25).

My research focuses on early modern English and European literature, including Shakespeare, in particular:

• Translation and transnationalism
• The history of books and reading
• Cultural and intellectual history
• Classical reception.

My two-volume scholarly edition Plutarch in English, 1528-1603, published in the MHRA Tudor & Stuart Translations series in 2020, offers the first book-length study of the reception of one of the most popular and influential ancient authors in Renaissance England. It restores early modern English versions of Plutarch's Essays and Lives to view as significant literary works in their own right and make them available to read alongside canonical works of English Renaissance literature.

My recently completed monograph, Classical Translation and the Culture of Counsel in Tudor England, reveals how sixteenth-century translators of ancient Greek and Roman history, oratory, and moral philosophy presented themselves as counsellors to monarchs, nobles, and other leaders of the commonwealth and intervened in some of the most significant political developments and debates of the Tudor period, from Henry VIII's divorce to the Armada and from controversies over military intervention in support of Protestantism on the Continent to political ideas about freedom and democracy.

I am currently working on two new research projects that expand my interest in English Renaissance translation to the transnational dimension of early modern European literature. The first is a multi-scalar study of the transcontinental reception of Plutarch, on which I am writing essays for Europe in the World: A Literary History, 1545-1661 (OUP) and a Special Issue of Translation and Literature. The second project is a study of the cultural geography of early modern European literature through the application of Digital Humanities tools (particularly Geographic Information Systems) to the circulation of books in sixteenth-century Europe, focusing particularly on the archive of the Antwerp printer Christophe Plantin.

I am also collaborating with Chetham's Library in Manchester on a research project on early modern readers from the North West of England, funded by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award.