Brian Cummings is Anniversary Professor at the University of York. Before arriving at York, he was Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and then Professor of English at the University of Sussex. He has held visiting fellowships in Granada, Munich, Oxford, Rotterdam, Toronto, Utrecht, and Washington D.C. In 2012, he gave the Clarendon Lectures at Oxford University; in 2013, the Margaret Mann Phillips Plenary Lecture at the Renaissance Society of America; he has also given the British Academy annual Shakespeare Lecture, the Shakespeare Birthday Lecture in Washington D.C, and the Erasmus Birthday Lecture in Amsterdam. He is a Fellow and Trustee of the British Academy and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.