Gina Walter

My research interests are in early modern literature: particularly drama, material culture, and representations of death and grief. Recently I have been working on some of the material things that are used to perform death in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, including ghost costumes and fake bodies. I am also co-editing a collection on materiality in Christopher Marlowe’s plays.

I am also interested broadly in the cultural history of death, ideas about artistic representation after the Reformation, and how we use material things to work through both difficult personal emotions and disruptive cultural changes. I have worked on contemporary theatre projects and public activities to do with grief, including The Colours of Loss [research-information.bris.ac.uk] project and Good Grief Weston [superculture.org.uk]. 

I was a founding member of the Revels Office early career network – if you are a PhD candidate or early career researcher working broadly in the field of early modern performance and are interested in joining, do send me an email.

I studied for both my BA and MA in English Literature at the University of Bristol, before returning there several years later for an AHRC-funded PhD. I have just joined the University of Manchester for September 2025.

Teaching

I currently teach on various early modern units - Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare, Perspectives in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MA), and Shakespeare: Theory and Archive (MA) – alongside the first year Reading Literature course.