Academic Career
- Reader in Renaissance Literature, ÄûÃÊÊÓƵ, 2025-
- Senior Lecturer in English, ÄûÃÊÊÓƵ, 2013-2025
- Lecturer in English, ÄûÃÊÊÓƵ, 2007-2013
- Previously employed at: Northampton University; De Montfort University; East Carolina University, USA; and the University of Birmingham.
Current and Recent Professional Responsibilities at Loughborough
- Research Lead for the Health Humanities Hub (July 2024-present)
- Undergraduate Admissions Lead for English (June 2024-present)
- Member of the REF-2021 Outputs Review Group for English (2022-2024)
- Mentor on UK Young Academy Application Process (2022-2024)
- Academic Lead for International Exchange Students, English (2021-2024)
- Chair of Part A English Working Group (2021-2022).
Selected Research Esteem and Recognition
- Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Member of the AHRC Peer Review College (and AHRC Panel Member).
- Member of the European Shakespeare Research Association
- Member of the International Health Humanities Network
- Member of the Renaissance Society of America
- Member of the Shakespeare Association of America.
- Peer reviewer for leading publishers including Routledge and Gale Cengage and for leading journals, including Studies in English Literature and Renaissance Quarterly.
Recent International Speaking Invitations
- 12 July 2025: Invited Panel Paper on 'Shakespeare and the Past' delivered at the European Shakespeare Research Association (ESRA) Annual Conference in Portugal, 9-12 July 2025
- 6 December 2024: Invited research paper at the yearly meeting of English and American Rhenish Scholars (EARS) at the University of Basel, Switzerland, 6-7 December 2024
Recent Funding Success
- Co-curator on 3-day British Academy Summer Showcase Exhibition: 'Materials of Pandemic Care Across Time'. British Academy. Carlton Terrace. 19-21 June 2025
- Six-month University Fellowship (2023-2024) plus award of additional funds to present the preliminary results of research at the Shakespeare Association of America annual conference in Portland Oregon, 10-13 April 2024.
- 2021-2023 Co-lead with Dr Sam Winter (School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences) on the ÄûÃÊÊÓƵ Institute of Advanced Studies annual interdisciplinary theme for 2022-23 of 'Breathe', hosting two International Fellows (from Sweden and the USA).
Public Engagement
As a leading authority on early modern literary culture and in the scholarly sub-field Shakespeare and food, Joan has communicated her research findings to various public-facing organisations. These include the BBC, Shakespeare's Globe, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Spain's best-selling daily newspaper EL País, and The Conversation. Joan invites public-engagement enquiries on Shakespeare and culinary culture and her more recent projects: early modern attitudes towards foreigners, medieval women's religious writing, the impact of medieval culture (including anti-Semitism) on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and sensory history.
Joan is a leading authority on early modern literary culture and in the scholarly sub-field Shakespeare and food, publishing the first monograph on the topic (Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays, Ashgate, 2007). Since then she has helped spread this new field's roots further into literary history with her critical edition Three Sixteenth-Century Dietaries (Manchester University Press, 2017) and the co-authored (with Charlotte Boyce) A History of Food in Literature (Routledge 2017). Her most recent monograph, Receiving the Stranger in Shakespeare: Hospitality and Hostility in the Plays, was published by Routledge in 2025.
Joan is currently developing a research project on the role of the senses in early modern culture and is continuing her research into late medieval anti-Semitism in the context of Shakespeare's humanitarian approach to religious and ethnic difference.
Joan specializes in teaching early modern and medieval literature, but has taught all periods, genres, and critical theory. She is responsible for introducing the teaching of medieval literature and culture at ÄûÃÊÊÓƵ. She currently leads the advanced level undergraduate module 'Adapting Shakespeare' that considers Shakespeare's scripts in the context of his sources and modern film adaptations.
Joan is currently Principal Supervisor for the Doctoral Researcher Keiran Fairhurst on his thesis "Indulgence in Early Modern Poetry: Wyatt, Shakespeare, Donne".
She has supervised the following PhDs to completion at Loughborough as Principal Supervisor:
- Chloe Owen, "‘My dream was lengthened after life’: Sleep, Hallucinations and the Supernatural in Early-Modern Drama" (2021)
- Amir Andwari, "The Return of the Abject: A Psychoanalytic Analysis of a Selection of Shakespeare's Plays in the Light of Julia Kristeva's Theories of the Mind" (2018)
She has served as External Examiner for PhDs at University College London and Anglia Ruskin University.
She welcomes candidates for PhD supervision on any aspect of medieval or early modern literature and culture including Shakespeare and on Health Humanities.
- Receiving the Stranger in Shakespeare: Hospitality and Hostility in the Plays, Taylor & Francis Group (Routledge), 2025, ISBN: 9781040364727, 233 pp.
- "War, Hunger, and Gluttony in the First and Second Tetralogy: Sir John Oldcastle and Jack Cade, Shakespeare Survey, 78, pp.238-247, 2025, ISSN: 0080-9152.
- "Reimagining This Creature: Hospitality and Autohagiography in the visions of Margery Kempe" in History, the journal of the Historical Association, 2021, vol. 106, pp.561-577, ISSN 0018-2648
- "The Merchant of Venice and the demise of hospitality" in the Routledge journal Shakespeare, 2021, vol. 18, pp.24-45, ISSN: 1745-0918
- Three Sixteenth Century Dietaries: A Critical Edition, Revels Companion Library, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017, ISBN 9780719081132, 331 pp.
- A History of Food in Literature from the Fourteenth Century to the Present co-authored with Charlotte Boyce, London: Routledge, 2017, ISBN 9780415840514, 313pp.
- "Diet and Identity in Early Modern Dietaries and Shakespeare: The Inflections of Nationality, Gender, Social Rank and Age" Shakespeare Studies, Volume 42, 2014, pp.75-90, ISSN: 0582-9399.
- Shakespeare and the Language of Food: A Dictionary, Continuum/Arden Shakespeare Dictionaries, London: Bloomsbury (formerly Continuum), 2010, ISBN 9781441179982, 480 pp.
- Renaissance Food from Rabelais to Shakespeare: Culinary Readings and Culinary Histories, London: Routledge (formerly Ashgate), 2010, ISBN 9780754664277, 170 pp.
- Food in Shakespeare: Early Modern Dietaries and the Plays, London: Routledge (formerly Ashgate), 2007, ISBN 0754655474, 176 pp.