Estelle Sheehan

Estelle Sheehan was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, from which she graduated with a BA in English and Latin, and was the recipient of five university prizes (including prizes for first place in both English and Latin BA). She subsequently read for a PhD (under Michael McGann) on the Latin poetry of John Milton. Having taken the PGCE (with commendation) at Queen's, she taught Latin for one year in Sullivan Upper School, Holywood. In 1989-1990 she was the E.K. Chambers Student (in English Literature) at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (under the supervison of A.D. Nuttall). She was appointed to a Lectureship in Classics at Queen's in 1990, to a Senior Lectureship in Classics in 2000, to a Senior Lectureship in English in 2002, to a Readership in English in 2004, and in 2005 to the Chair of English and Neo-Latin Studies. She took early retirement  in June 2017, at which time she received the title of Emerita Professor. She is married to Tony Sheehan, Humanities Computing Network Manager at Queen's, 1990-2012.

Estelle Sheehan's research portfolio is informed by her expertise as a Miltonist and more broadly by her interest in the English and neo-Latin poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (in particular the Latin poetry of English poets). She also works on the reception of the classics in all periods.

Publishing under her maiden name, Estelle Haan is the author or editor of fifteen books including From Academia to Amicitia: Milton's Latin Writings and the Italian Academies (American Philosophical Society, 1998); Thomas Gray's Latin Poetry: Some Classical, Neo-Latin and Vernacular Contexts (Collection Latomus, Brussels, 2000); Andrew Marvell's Latin Poetry: From Text to Context (Collection Latomus, Brussels, 2003), Vergilius Redivivus: Studies in Joseph Addison's Latin Poetry (American Philosophical Society, 2005); Classical Romantic: Identity in the Latin Poetry of Vincent Bourne (American Philosophical Society, 2007), Sporting with the Classics: The Latin Poetry of William Dillingham (American Philosophical Society, 2010), Both English and Latin: Bilingualism and Biculturalism in Milton's Neo-Latin Writings (American Philosophical Society, 2012), The Latin and Greek Poetry of John Milton (Oxford University Press, 2014), John Milton: Epistolarum Familiarium Liber Unus and Uncollected Letters, edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Leuven University Press, 2019), winner of  the John T. Shawcross Award of The Milton Society of America, and John Milton's Roman Sojourns 1638-1639: Neo-Latin Self-Fashioning (American Philosophical Society, 2020). Her Miltonic interests are further reflected in her elected membership of the Editorial Boards of Milton Studies and Milton Quarterly.  She has served as Consultant Advisor to the International Advisory Board for a major AHRC-funded three-year research project 'Bridging the Continental Divide' (based in the University of Glasgow), which has resulted in the publication of an electronic edition of the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637), the largest anthology of Scottish neo-Latin ever produced. In July 2017 she was appointed to the Advisory Board of Humanistica Lovaniensia: Journal of Neo-Latin Studies (Leuven). She is currently writing two books on Milton and Naples, and on Milton's Latin poetry. Among her future research plans is a book entitled Surprised by Syntax: Reading the Latinity of Paradise Lost.