Peter S. Donaldson, Ford International Professor of Humanities and Professor of Literature has undergraduate degrees from Columbia and Cambridge and a PhD in English from Columbia. His early research led to the publication of a previously unknown treatise by Stephen Gardiner, England’s chancellor in the reign of Queen Mary, which uses passages from Machiavelli’s The Prince to reflect on English dynastic politics, and later to Machiavelli and Mystery of State (Cambridge U Press, 1988).
Since the late 1980s he has focused on two major research areas: Shakespeare on Film and electronic projects including the Shakespeare Electronic Archive, Hamlet on the Ramparts and the Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive.
Donaldson is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK), has held research fellowships from the NEH and ACLS, and was the Inaugural Lloyd Davis Distinguished Visiting Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Queensland (2006) as well as Class of 1960 Fellow for Excellence in Teaching and the first holder of the Ann Fetter Friedlander Professorship in the Humanities at MIT.