Project Team

CHRISTOPHER HIGHLEY, Co-Principal Investigator and Playhouse Researcher. Christopher Highley is the Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the Ohio State University. He is responsible for the first and second Blackfriars playhouses that were built inside different parts of the post-Reformation Blackfriars priory. His recent, Blackfriars in Early Modern London: Theater, Church, and Neighborhood (Oxford UP, 2022), was preceded by Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford UP, 2008), and Shakespeare, Spenser, and the Crisis in Ireland (Cambridge UP, 1997). He is a Project Coordinator with the online Map of Early Modern London where he oversees an effort to add encyclopedia-style entries on all the city parishes.

NICOLE KONG, Co-Principal Investigator and GIS Specialist. Nicole Kong is Professor of GIS and Associate Dean of  Research at Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies. She oversees Purdue’s hosting of the mapping infrastructure and geospatial data for Shakespeare’s Theaterscape. Her research interests include geospatial data management, spatial information visualization and analysis, as well as applying geospatial information in multiple disciplines. She has participated in multiple digital humanities projects serving as the GIS expert in geodatabase and web GIS development, and served as instructor in humanities training programs. She led the GIS team at Libraries and School of Information Studies, and led the effort to establish the Graduate Certificate Program in Geospatial Information Science at Purdue University. Her team has been designated as one of a few institutions in the Esri Innovation Program (EIP), and was recognized with a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award internationally in 2020.

CHRISTOPHER MATUSIAK, Co-Principal Investigator and Playhouse Researcher. Christopher Matusiak focuses on the Cockpit district. An Associate Professor of English at Ithaca College, his research on the political lives and social networks of early modern actors has appeared in journals such as Shakespeare Quarterly, Huntington Library Quarterly, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, and Early Theatre. In 2015, the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society recognized his work on the Cockpit playhouse in Drury Lane, awarding him the Barbara D. Palmer prize for best article involving original archival research. He has edited Robert Greene’s comedy FriarBacon and Friar Bungay for the Queen’s Men Editions digital series (published by Internet Shakespeare Editions). Current projects include an edited collection of manuscript and print sources illustrating the history of the Drury Lane Cockpit (for The Records of Early English Drama) and a critical edition of Henry the VI, Part 1 (positing Christopher Marlowe as Shakespeare’s co-author) for The New Oxford Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe (Oxford, UP, 2026-7).

CALLAN DAVIS, Playhouse Researcher. Callan Davies, the project leader for the Curtain Playhouse district, works across early modern literary, cultural, and theatre history. He is Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Southampton. His new book, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620, is an accessible account of the playhouse across early modern England (2023).  He’s part of the Box Office Bears project (researching animal sports in early modern England), as well as the Middling Culture team examining early modern status, creativity, writing, and material culture, and the Before Shakespeare team. He is the Editor of the Curtain playhouse records for Records of Early English Drama’s Records of Early English Drama REED London Online and is on the advisory board for the journal Early Theatre. His first monograph, Strangeness in Jacobean Drama (2021), was shortlisted for the Shakespeare’s Globe Book Award 2023. His article on bowling alleys and playhouses in sixteenth century London for Early Theatre won the MRDS Barbara Palmer Award 2020, and he has pieces recently released or forthcoming on middling community and Bristol’s Wine Street playhouse for English Historical Review; prose and playing for The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Nashe; a recently-published collection on early modern ephemera with Hannah Lilley and Catherine Richardson; and the introduction for the new Oxford World’s Classics The Merry Wives of Windsor.

KIRBY KALBAUGH, Project Technology Implementation. Kirby Kalbaugh is a Lead Research Analyst for the College of Agriculture Data Services. Kirby’s role is to employ his experience with data integration and technology implementation. He is responsible for integrating the GIS data and curated records into the project website.

BYRON MOLDOFSKY, GIS and Cartographic Specialist. Former manager and director of the GIS and Cartography Office, Department of Geography, University of Toronto, Byron Moldofsky brings to Shakespeare’s Theaterscape his leadership and expertise in GIS, and particularly in the digitization and georeferencing of historical maps. He is responsible for many print and online mapping and atlas projects, and a member of research teams on various grant-funded projects providing GIS and mapping services and support. He has collaborated with Sally-Beth Maclean, Director of Research for Records of Early English Drama (REED) on a series of projects to transition the REED research collection from print volumes to online database, augmented by innovative web mapping. The most recent of these was the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada 2021 Insight Grant “The Evolution of a Renaissance London Entertainment District: Playhouses and Parishes on the South Bank.”

PATRICK GREGORY, Records Paleographer and Translator.