Staff Profile

About me

I came to Newcastle via South Wales, London, Poland (Silesia), and Edinburgh.

Qualifications

BA English Literature Hons (Queen Mary College, University of London); PhD (Edinburgh University) 

Roles and Responsibilities

Director of Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute (NUHRI)

With James Cummings I co-lead the 'Text in the Digital Age' theme in the University's Centre for Data.

Fellowships

Fellow of the English Association (FEA)

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS)

Turing Fellow, The Alan Turing Institute, 2021-2022

Contribution Awards

Distinguished Academic Contribution Award, Newcastle University, 2016

London Renaissance Seminar Contribution Award 2021 (Established Researcher)

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My expertise includes the history of reading, the history of rhetoric and the history of the book, but I approach all three through a focus on the physical voice. Books are not only objects held in the hand, to be read silently. They are alive with the voices of potential readers. This is especially true of books in the sixteenth-century - my period of specialism.

My work on reading and voice is informed by my study of schoolroom rhetoric as a performance practice, and by my collaborations with performers and digital humanists who are helping me to recover the idea of the print 'audiobook'. This approach underpins the AHRC-funded Thomas Nashe Project, and the edition we are creating for Oxford University Press. 

You can hear me talking about the sounds of the early modern schoolroom with Abigail Wincott for her Sounds of the Past series here, about the voice of Anne Askew on Not Just the Tudors with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb here, about 'Staging the Voice' in celebration of our new strategic partnership with Opera North here, and about voices, books and bees at the SRS Annual Lecture 2021 at the British School at Rome here.

You can find out about the work on Animating Text in the Digital Age (ATNU) that I have overseen with James Cummings, Tiago Sousa Garcia, colleagues in music and history, data scientists and software engineers here. This project is now 'Text in the Digital Age', and one of the pillars of the University's interdisciplinary Centre for Data.

CURRENT RESEARCH

My most recent book, Voices and Books in the English Renaissance: A New History of Reading, Oxford University Press, 2019, won the 2020 European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) biennial award for Literatures in the English Language. It was also highly commended by the DeLong Book History Prize 2020: 'After Richards book historians can no longer neglect the persistent presence of the voice within the culture of print'.

Read Irina Dumitrescu's review of Voices and Books, 'How to Read Aloud', in the London Review of Books.

I am the co-editor with Virginia Cox (Cambridge) of Rhetoric in the Renaissance 1380-1640, Volume III in The Cambridge History of Rhetoric, General Editors: Rita Copeland and Peter Mack (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 

I am a general editor of the Critical Edition of the Works of Thomas Nashe, alongside Joseph Black, Andrew Hadfield and Cathy Shrank. I am the PI of the AHRC-funded Thomas Nashe Project. With Kate De Rycker and Andrew Hadfield, I am co-editing The Oxford Handbook to Thomas Nashe (Oxford University Press: in preparation).

I am co-leading a new Leverhulme Trust project (2022-25) on sound and the environment with software engineers, musicians, musicologists, bio-environmental scientists: Bee-ing Human: an interactive bee book for the 21st century.

CURRENT PhD STUDENTS

Mabel Mundy, Matthew Ryan

EXTERNAL ROLES

Swiss National Science Foundation

Evaluator

UKRI

Appointed to the UK Research and Innovations Future Leaders Fellowships (UKRI FLF) programmes Peer Review College, 2018-

AHRC

Appointed to the AHRC Advisory Board, 2017-2020, renewed until 2023

Appointed to the AHRC Advisory Board, 2012-2015

Chair of the AHRC Advisory Group for the strategic theme: Care for the Future, 2013-2016

Chair of AHRC Research Careers and Training Advisory Group, 2014-2016

Member of the steering committee for the BA/AHRC Review of Support for Arts and Humanities Researchers Post-PhD, 2014: https://ahrc.ukri.org/documents/project-reports-and-reviews/support-for-arts-and-humanities-researchers-post-phd-final-report/

English Association

Chair of the English Association Higher Education Committee, 2015-2020

Trustee of the English Association, English Association 2015-

Member of the review group for the QAA Subject benchmark statement for English, February 2015

Society for Renaissance Studies

Editor of Renaissance Studies, 2012-2020

Associate Editor of Renaissance Studies, 2007-2012

Member of the Council of the Society of Renaissance Studies, 2007-2012; 2012-2020

RESEARCH GRANTS

2022-2025 Leverhulme Trust Project grant for Bee-ing Human: an interactive bee book for the 21st century

2020 British Academy, Covid and Society Commission 

2019 (for 2022-23) Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship for Prof. Bruce Smith, USC, Los Angeles

2016-2021 University Research Innovation Funding for Animating Texts Newcastle University (ATNU)

2015-2020 PI for AHRC Research Grant: ‘The Thomas Nashe Project’, with Professor Andrew Hadfield, Professor Joseph Black, Professor Cathy Shrank Co-Is 

2014-2015 PI for AHRC Network Grant: ‘Voices and Books 1500-1800’, with Professor Richard Wistreich, RCM as the Co-I

2013-2015 Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship: ‘Useful Books: Talking and Reading in Renaissance England’

2012 British Academy Small Research Grant: Thomas Nashe: 21st-Century Author

2012 Wellcome Trust Research Expenses: Reading, dialogue, and generation in early modern Britain

2009 Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship: Diet and Dialogue in Early Modern England

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• Richards J, Cox V, ed. Rhetoric in the Renaissance. Volume III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. In Preparation.
• Richards J. Voices and bees: the evolution of Charles Butler’s acoustic book. In: Christopher Cannon and Steven Justice, ed. The Sound of Writing. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023. In Press.
• Richards J, Law J, SheekyBird H, White R. COVID AND SOCIETY: The Impact of COVID-19 on Children and Young People and the potential contribution of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. British Academy: Newcastle University, 2021.
• Richards J. How Lady Jane Grey may have used her education. In: Scott-Baumann E; Clarke D; Ross SCE, ed. Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, pp.39-51.
• Richards J. Voices and Books in the English Renaissance: A New History of Reading. Oxford University Press, 2019.
• Richards J. The Voice of Anne Askew. Journal of the Northern Renaissance 2017, 9, 1-17.
• Richards J, Hadfield A. Getting started on proposing an edition. In: Phillips, Harriet and Williams, Claire Bryony, ed. A Handbook of Editing Early Modern Texts. London: Taylor and Francis, 2017.
• Richards J, Wistreich R. The Anatomy of the Renaissance Voice. In: Anne Whitehead; Angela Woods; Sarah Atkinson; Jane Macnaughton; Jennifer Richards, ed. Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Edinburgh University Press, 2016, pp.276-293.
• Whitehead A, Woods A, Atkinson S, Macnaughton J, Richards J, ed. Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
• Richards J. Reading and Listening to William Baldwin. In: Archer, H; Hadfield, A, ed. A Mirror for Magistrates in Context: Literature, History and Politics in Early Modern England. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016, pp.71-88.
• Richards J. Equipment for Thinking: or Why Kenneth Burke is Still Worth Reading. Studies in Philosophy and Education 2015, 34(4), 363-375.
• Richards J. Reading and Hearing The Womans Booke in Early Modern England. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 2015, 89(3), 434-462.
• Richards J. Health, Intoxication, and Civil Conversation in Renaissance England. Past and Present 2014, 222(Supp.9), 168-186.
• Richards J. Diagnosing the Body Politic: Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part Two. In: R. Falconer, D. Renevey, ed. Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine. Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2013, pp.145-165.
• Richards J. Rhetoric. In: Kewes, P., Archer, I.W., Heal, F, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp.285-301.
• Richards J. Commonplacing and Prose Writing: William Baldwin and Robert Burton. In: Hadfield, A, ed. The Oxford Handbook of English Prose. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp.43-58.
• Richards J. Useful Books: Reading Vernacular Regimens in Sixteenth-Century England. Journal of the History of Ideas 2012, 73(2), 247-271.
• Stewart A, Sullivan G, Lemon R, McDowell N, Richards J, ed. Encyclopedia of English Renaissance Literature. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
• Richards J. Male Friendship and Counsel in Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pythias. In: Betteridge, T., Walker, G, ed. The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Drama. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, pp.293-308.
• Early Modern Research Group. Commonwealth: the Social, Cultural, and Conceptual Contexts of an Early Modern Keyword. Historical Journal 2011, 54(3), 659-687.
• Richards J, Schurink F. Introduction: The Textuality and Materiality of Reading in Early Modern England. Huntington Library Quarterly 2010, 73(3), 345-361.
• Richards J, Schurink F, ed. The Textuality of Reading in Early Modern England. California, USA: University of California Press: Huntington Library Quarterly, 2010.
• Richards J. Gabriel Harvey's Choleric Writing. In: Pincombe M; Shrank C, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.655-670.
• Richards J. Shakespeare and the politics of co-authorship: Henry VIII. In: Armitage, D., Condren, C., Fitzmaurice, A, ed. Shakespeare and Early Modern Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp.176-194.
• Richards J. Transforming 'A Mirror for Magistrates'. In: Healy M; Healy T, ed. Renaissance Transformations: The Making of English Writing, 1500-1650. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009.
• Richards J. Gabriel Harvey, James VI, and the Politics of Reading Early Modern Poetry. Huntington Library Quarterly 2008, 71(2), 303-321.
• Richards J. Rhetoric. London: Routledge, 2007.
• Richards J, Thorne A, ed. Rhetoric, women and politics in early modern England. London: Routledge, 2007.
• Richards J. Part I: Beginnings - 1. Classical and Early Modern Ideas of Memory. In: Rossington M; Whitehead A, ed. Theories of Memory: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006, pp.19-67.
• Richards J. Roger Ascham. In: Kastan DS, ed. Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Richards J. Eating Honestly: Fashioning a Temperate Self. In: Anglistentag 2005. 2005, Bamberg, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier.
• Richards J, ed. Early Modern Civil Discourses. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
• Richards J, ed. Elizabeth Singer (Rowe). Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2003.
• Rhodes N, Richards J, Marshall J, ed. King James VI and I: Selected Writings. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 2003.
• Richards J. Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Richards J. Assumed simplicity and the critique of nobility: Or, how Castiglione read Cicero. Renaissance Quarterly 2001, 54(2), 460-486.
• Richards J. "A wanton trade of living"? - Rhetoric, effeminacy, and the early modern courtier. Criticism 2000, 42(2), 185-206.
• Richards J, Knowles J, ed. Shakespeare's Late Plays: New Readings. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999.
• Richards J. Social Decorum in The Winter's Tale. In: Richards JT; Knowles J, ed. Shakespeare's Late Plays: New Readings. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, pp.75-91.
• Richards J. Philip Sidney, Mary Sidney and Protestant Poetics. In: Protestant Men, Protestant Women: The Sidneys in Renaissance Society. 1996, University of Dundee: Sidney Journal: Sidney Society.
• Richards J. Anna Weamys's A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's 'Arcadia'. Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies 1995, 12(2), 20-24.
• Richards J. The Art of Being Persuaded: Effeminacy and Rhetoric in Philip Sidney's Writing. Sidney Journal 1995, 13(2), 3-12.
• Richards J, Cox V, ed. Rhetoric in the Renaissance 1380-1640, Volume III, in The Cambridge History of Rhetoric (General Editors: Rita Copeland and Peter Mack). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. In Preparation.
• De Rycker K, Hadfield A, Richards J, ed. The Oxford Handbook to Thomas Nashe. Oxford University Press, 2019. In Preparation.
• Richards J, Wistreich R. Introduction Voicing Text 1500-1700. Huntington Library Quarterly 2019, 82(1), 3-16.
• Richards J. Rhetoric and Reading. In: V.Cox and J.Richards, ed. Rhetoric in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. In Preparation.