The Folger is reopening on November 17, 2023. Read more about how this will affect researchers.
About Scholarly Programs
Folger Institute scholarly programs gather advanced scholars to work together around specific topics relating to Shakespeare and his time.
Program planning for the Folger Institute’s scholarly programs is guided primarily by the Folger Institute Consortium, the Center for Shakespeare Studies, and the Center for the History of British Political Thought.
For more information
Owen Williams
Associate Director for Scholarly Programs
owilliams@folger.edu
(202) 675-0352
Dr. Williams’s Bio
Scholarly Programs FAQs
Current and Upcoming Scholarly Programs
Apply for Scholarly Programs
The Folger Institute Consortium
The Consortium is a collaborative endeavor of the Folger Shakespeare Library and more than 40 universities in the U.S. and abroad. Its programs are largely funded by annual membership fees.
The Folger provides grants-in-aid, administrative staff, meeting space, access to its collections, and scholarly programming to Consortium affiliates. Each member university nominates a faculty representative to sit on the Consortium Executive Committee, which is charged with program planning and oversight. Find out more about the Consortium on Folgerpedia.
The Center for Shakespeare Studies
The Center for Shakespeare Studies posits that no single critical approach, historical perspective, scholarly method, or pedagogical strategy can do justice to Shakespeare’s texts and contexts. Instead, the Center aims to broaden Shakespeare scholarship and bring different approaches into conversation.
Founded in 1986 by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center presents a wide variety of programming, including NEH Summer Institutes for College and University Faculty and conferences supported by NEH Collaborative Research grants. The many products of the Center’s scholarly work include scholarly publications, audio recordings of the Shakespeare Birthday Lectures, and Primary Sourcebooks.
The Center for the History of British Political Thought
The Center for the History of British Political Thought sponsors programs and publications that have remapped the main patterns of political thought and discourse in a major political culture over three seminal centuries. It was established in 1984 through a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, and sustained with a 1996 endowment from the late Dr. Barbara Taft. A number of past programs have resulted in publications such as The Varieties of British Political Thought, 1500–1800.
Program Spotlights
Focus on a Decade of Folger Institute Research and Community
In the past decade, seventy-five different Guest Authors have published over one hundred posts in The Collation. Roughly half of these contributors wrote posts about their experiences working with the Folger collections and researcher community through Institute-sponsored programming. Many fellows…
Book History, Manuscript Studies, and Navigating Special Collections During COVID-19
A guest post by Breanne Weber and Tamara Mahadin In the midst of a pandemic, participants of the Folger Institute’s “Orientation to Research Methods and Agendas” gathered in a virtual seminar space this summer. The co-directors and some of the…
Come Hither, Actors / Physicality
A guest post by Barbara Bono, Arlynda Boyer, Eric Brinkman, Musa Gurnis, Maria S. Horne, Emily MacLeod, Deborah Payne, Melanie Rio, Joseph Roach, Kirara Sato, Katherine Schaap Williams, and Gretchen York The fourth and final part of the blog post…