Janice Valls-Russell

Janice Valls-Russell is a Principal Research Associate of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), a member of the Institute for Research on the Renaissance, the Neo-Classical Age and the Enlightenment (IRCL) and a joint research unit of the CNRS and Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier (France). Her main professional areas of interest are the early modern reception of classical mythology and present-day engagements with Shakespeare in performance and education, with a focus on Europe. She is the author of dozens of articles and book chapters, has co-edited Interweaving Myths in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries (2017), Thomas Heywood and the Classical Tradition (2021), Shakespeare’s Others in 21st-Century European Performance: The Merchant of Venice and Othello (Arden Shakespeare, 2021, forthcoming), collections of essays on performance, and has translated John Gross’s Shylock: A Legend and Its Legacy into French. She is a member of the editorial board of Cahiers Élisabéthains.

Janice’s interest in the work of the all-boys company Edward’s Boys (King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon) led to tours of the company to the south of France in 2016 and 2018 (which should resume in 2022). She has co-authored a book chapter on this experience, for a volume forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

With Florence March, Janice leads a research action program in six high schools in Montpellier on Shakespeare and Citizenship, which has been included in a national framework agreement with the French Culture Ministry. Launched in 2016, this program brings together academics, theatre practitioners, high-school teachers, and their students in a hands-on approach to Shakespeare’s plays: through discussions and performance, the students, who come from very diverse backgrounds and neighborhoods, explore civic values such as togetherness, solidarity and mutual respect, and address gender, racial and other forms of discrimination. In helping build this project, Janice reconciles her research interests and her volunteer work in non-profit organizations in defense of children’s rights, for which she was received as Chevalier (Knight) into the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest order of merit, in 2012.