About

Jeffrey R. Wilson is a Shakespeare scholar, Editor-in-Chief of Public Humanities, and Director of the Harvard Law School Writing Center. 

He is the author of three books: Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History (2022), Shakespeare and Game of Thrones (2021), and Shakespeare and Trump (2020). His research on Shakespeare and modernity has appeared in journals such as Modern Language Quarterly, Genre, College Literature, Shakespeare, English Language Notes, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, Law and the Humanities, Disability Studies Quarterly, Early Modern Literary Studies, Mosaic, and Crime, Media, Culture. His work has been featured on CNN, NPR, MSNBC, New York Times, Salon, JSTOR Daily, Zocalo Public Square, Academe, CounterPunch, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Harvard Gazette. He has been a guest on series such as the Folger Library’s Shakespeare Unlimited, Shakespeare Hour LIVE, Shakespeare for All, The State of Shakespeare, and Marvel Movie Minute. 

From 2022-25, as Instructional Design Lead in Harvard's Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, he created courses for Harvard Online. From 2014-22, he taught the “Why Shakespeare?”course in the Harvard College Writing Program. He has also taught English and Religious Studies at the University of California, Irvine; writing and theory for the Department of Criminal Justice at California State University, Long Beach; and courses on the humanities, museum studies, and the fundamentals of grammar at the Harvard Extension School.

Originally from Kansas, Jeff is a proud community college alum and holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Irvine. He lives in Lowell, MA with his wife, Allison, and two kids, Liam and Maggie. He is a trustee at Merrimack Repertory Theatre (even though performing on stage in front of other people is his idea of hell) and is the president of Lowell Youth Lacrosse (even though he's never held a lacrosse stick in his life).