Biography

Gašper Jakovac specializes in early modern theatre, performance culture, and post-Reformation Catholicism in England. He completed his PhD in English Studies at Durham University, where he worked as a doctoral researcher on the AHRC-funded Records of Early English Drama North-East project (2014–2018). His studies were also supported by Gerda Henkel Stiftung. He was an IMEMS Library Fellow at Durham Cathedral Library and will be a Visiting Fellow at the Bodleian Library (Oxford) in August 2019 and January 2020. His latest research was published in British Catholic History.

At the EUI, Gašper will work on his second monograph provisionally entitled ‘Entertainment and Performance in the English Catholic Community, 1558–1660’. Focusing on English provincial society, the book considers how Catholics, a persecuted religious minority, used performative entertainment, such as drama, dance, music, equestrian sports, and traditional ceremonies, to articulate and fashion specifically Catholic values, anxieties, hopes, and beliefs.

By the end of his Max Weber Fellowship, he aims to consolidate his writing on household theatre and horse-racing practices amongst the Catholic landed elite. He will also be working on a critical edition of Robert Owen’s manuscript play The History of Purgatory (for PIMS, Toronto), a unique example of early-seventeenth-century Catholic drama in the English vernacular, for which he was awarded a Society for Theatre Research grant.

From 2014 to 2019, Gašper worked as teaching assistant at Durham University, tutoring English undergraduates in Classics, Biblical literature, Shakespeare, and Renaissance culture.