Kirsten E. Shepherd (formerly Shepherd-Barr) is an academic specialising in Victorian and modern English literature, the interaction between science and literature, and theatre studies, especially science in theatre.
In 2015, she was appointed a professor of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Oxford.
[1] After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree in English at Yale University, Shepherd worked in publishing for two years before completing a Master of Arts programme at the University of Oslo, funded by a Fulbright Grant, and then a Doctor of Philosophy degree in English at the University of Oxford.
She taught at North Carolina State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the University of Birmingham, before taking up a post at Oxford in 2007 as a fellow and tutor at St Catherine's College.
[2] Shepherd's research has focused primarily on the way that plays and performances "have engaged with scientific ideas", which she has explored in her books Science on Stage: From Doctor Faustus to Copenhagen (2006), and Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett (2015), the research for which was funded by a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2011–12.