Expanding networks of scholarship: Patricia Akhimie on connecting with scholars and artists in new ways

As we near the end of 2025, we want to share with our audiences a first glimpse at ideas for the upcoming year from a few members of the Folger’s leadership team. As we reflect on the past 18 months — including the completion of our renovations, reopening, and re-imagining how the Folger connects people to Shakespeare — we are excited about the possibilities ahead of us.

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Patricia Akhimie, Director of the Folger Institute, discusses how the Institute is bringing the Folger’s vast resources and programming to more scholars, researchers, artists, and members of the public than ever before. 

“Part of my job as the Director of the Folger Institute is to create and deliver unique opportunities for scholars of Shakespeare and early modern studies,” shares Patricia Akhimie. “When we’re designing a program, I think about what would make an amazing opportunity if I were in their shoes. It’s a fun thing to do—not just to dream it, but to make it real.”

Akhimie, who joined the Folger from Rutgers University in summer 2023, oversees fellowships, seminars, and programs that support advanced research in early modern studies for scholars, creatives, and thinkers from all around the world. Under her leadership, the Folger Institute has embraced flexibility and inclusion as guiding principles, expanding the reach of its programs and fellowships to a broader community of researchers and artists.

Welcoming more scholars

Working closely with Associate Director of Fellowships Ashley Buchanan, the Folger Institute has recently expanded the fellowship experience, allowing scholars to design residencies that better fit their lives.

“We’ve made the fellowships as flexible as possible,” Akhimie says. “If someone needs to spend part of their fellowship on-site and part of it remotely, we can make that happen.”

That simple change has had a profound impact: applications more than doubled between the 2023-24 and 2025-26 academic calendars, and acceptances have grown, opening the Folger’s doors to more researchers than ever before. “We found the need and we met it,” she adds.

The Institute has also been widening the circle of who sees the Folger as their intellectual home. For its workshops, symposia, and seminars—organized by Associate Director of Scholarly Programs Owen Williams—the Institute has been welcoming even more scholars from fields beyond English literature, such as art history, religious studies, philosophy, and the histories of medicine and science. Akhimie explains, “They all have a voice in deciding what kinds of programming we offer, making sure that the Institute’s offerings and resources reach their students and fellow faculty members, and what rare or unique collection materials get called up for study.”

Shakespeare and public programming

The Institute’s commitment to creating community extends beyond academia. With Leah Thomas, Public Humanities Program Manager, Akhimie has focused on connecting the Folger’s research activity to the public, from monthly “salons” (modeled after early modern spaces where thinkers shared their new philosophies, art, and poetry) at Quill & Crumb café, to a year-long rotating exhibition of contemporary artists who were inspired by their research in the Folger’s collections. “We want people to come to the Folger and learn about what’s happening here, but to do it in ways that are fun and engaging,” she says. “It’s about making the cutting edge of research part of a public humanities space.”

Looking ahead to the next few years, Akhimie promises programs, exhibitions, and experiences that will be “unlike anything you could see or do anywhere else.” These will blend scholarship, art, and storytelling in ways that could only happen at the Folger, the American home of Shakespeare. “There’s something really special happening here,” she says. “We’re turning what we know about Shakespeare and his world into new ways of seeing our own. The next few years are going to show just how many ways there are to do that.”