Mark Thornton Burnett, FEA, MRIA, is Professor of Renaissance Studies and Director of the Sir Kenneth Branagh Archive at Queen’s University Belfast.

He is the author of Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture: Authority and Obedience (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), Constructing ‘Monsters’ in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007; 2nd ed. 2012), Shakespeare and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and 'Hamlet' and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), the co-author of Great Shakespeareans: Welles, Kurosawa, Kozintsev, Zeffirelli (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), the editor of The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (London: Dent, 1999) and The Complete Poems of Christopher Marlowe (London: Everyman, 2000), and the co-editor of New Essays on ‘Hamlet’ (New York: AMS Press, 1994), Shakespeare and Ireland: History, Politics, Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), Reconceiving the Renaissance: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), Filming and Performing Renaissance History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011) and Women and Indian Shakespeares (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).

His work has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the European Commission, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre and the Huntington Library.

He is PI of two funded 2023-25 projects: 'Shakespeare and the Irish Actor' (Marie Curie/EPSRC), with experienced researcher Dr Emer McHugh, and 'Shakespeare, India, Diaspora' (British Academy Newton International Fellowship), with experienced researcher Dr Taarini Mookherjee. He is also series editor of the Bloomsbury Academic series, 'Shakespeare and Adaptation'. Volumes in the series thus far include: Thea Buckley, Mark Thornton Burnett, Sangeeta Datta and Rosa Garcia-Periago, eds, Women and Indian Shakespeares (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022); Gemma Kate Allred, Benjamin Broadribb and Erin Sullivan, eds, Lockdown Shakespeare: New Evolutions in Performance and Adaptation (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), William C. Carroll, Adapting 'Macbeth': A Cultural History (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022) and Julia Reinhard Lupton and Aliane Helou, eds, 'Romeo and Juliet', Adaptation and the Arts: 'Cut Him Out in Little Stars' (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). 

My interests include English Renaissance drama and culture, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Shakespeare on film, Shakespeare and adaptation, Irish studies and global Shakespeares, and I welcome applications from doctoral students in these and related areas.

Member of the Royal Irish Academy; Fellow of the English Association; Trustee and Director of the British Shakespeare Association (2019-2022); Sustained Excellence Teaching Award.

English in Transition; Shakespeare & Co.; Further Adventures in Shakespeare; Shakespeare and Asia.