Koel Chatterjee

Her research interests and publications are in Global Shakespeare and film, race theory, feminist Shakespeares, digital Shakespeares, and language and accents.

Her current publications include, but are not limited to, “Black Skin, White Masks: Izzat as an appropriation of Othello” for Indian Theatre Journal, Vol 5, ed., Sreedevi K. Nair, June 2021; “Indian Shakespeare Cinema and the Active Audience” for Shakespeare’s Audiences, ed. Matteo Pangallo and Peter Kirwan for Routledge’s Studies in Shakespeare series, 2021; “‘What doth your speech import?’: the implication of accents in Indian Shakespeares” for Shakespeare and Accentism, ed. Adele Lee for Routledge, 2021.

She was awarded her PhD in Shakespeare and Bollywood in 2018 from Royal Holloway, University of London and has recently co-edited a collection of essays on the impact of Indian Shakespeare Cinema in the West as part of the new Arden series Global Shakespeare Inverted, ed. David Schalkwyk David Schalkwyk, Silvia Bigliazzi, Bi-qi Beatrice Lei.

She is an active member of the Shakespeare Association of America, the British Shakespeare Association, and the Indian Shakespeare Association and has interests in organising academic events and has co-organised India-Pakistan-UK: Intertwined Narratives (2017) in collaboration with RHUL and Tara Arts, Indian Shakespeares on Screen (2016) in collaboration with BFI Southbank and Asia House, and the Shakespeare and Bollywood Conference at Royal Holloway University of London (2014). She is also the curator of shakespop.co.uk, an online space for academic and general interest discussions of Shakespeare in pop culture launched by the British Shakespeare Association in April 2022.

Teaching Experience

Koel is a member of the Centre for Educational Futures and teaches Integrated English on the International Foundation Certificate: Music and English; International Foundation Programme: Contemporary Dance and English; International Graduate Diploma: Dance and English; ISP Advanced (International Graduate Diploma option) within the Faculties of Music and Dance.

Koel frequently guest lectures on Global Shakespeare courses for several universities and public facing events across UK and India. She has previously taught Arts and Academic English within the Royal Holloway International Study Centre and has served as course leader, English Tutor and Pre-Sessional English Tutor within the Centre for the Development of Academic Skills at Royal Holloway. She also works as an Examiner for British Council and Cambridge Exams and serves on the registry and recruitment assessment boards on several UK universities.

Conference Papers 

Remixing the Classics: Digital Adaptation and the Literary and Dramatic Canon (Virtual), 2022 

Paper title: Mandaar or Macbeth in five parts: Digital Paratexts and how they shape our experience 

 

British Shakespeare Association Conference (Virtual), ‘Shakespeare In/Action’, 2021 

Paper Title: Shakespearean Echoes: the other side of the Indian Shakespeare Story 

 

World Shakespeare Congress (virtual), Singapore, 2021 

Paper Title: Shakespearean Echoes: the other side of the Indian Shakespeare Story 

 

European Shakespeare Research Association Conference (Virtual), Athens, 2021 

Paper title: Shakespeare in parts: the other Indian Shakespeare Story 

 

British Shakespeare Association Conference, ‘Race and Nation’, Swansea, 2019 

Workshop: Race, Nation and Digital Pedagogies in the 21st-century Classroom 

 

Armenian Shakespeare Conference, Venice, 2019 

Paper Title: What doth your speech import?’: the implication of accents in Indian Shakespeares 

 

European Shakespeare Research Association Conference, Rome, 2019 

Paper Title: Taking centre stage: Ophelia in Young Adult fiction 

 

Exoticism in Contemporary Transnational Cinema: Music and Spectacle, 2017 

Paper Title: Using Exoticism to Make Sense of Shakespeare: Examining the Mousetrap sequence in Haider 

 

Indian Shakespeares on Screen in collaboration with BFI Southbank and Asia House, 2016 

Conference: co-organiser 

Paper Title: Image as text in Arshinagar (2015), an Aparna Sen adaptation of Romeo and Juliet 

 

Shakespeare and Bollywood Conference, RHUL, 2014 

Conference co-organiser 

Paper Title: The Pivotal Role of Angoor in the history of Bollywood Shakespeares 

 

British Shakespeare Association Conference: Shakespeare: Text, Power, Authority, 2014 

Paper Title: Post postcolonial Shakespeare and Angoor, a Hindi Comedy of Errors 

 

Shakespeare Institute Graduate Conference: BritGrad 2014 

Paper Title: The Pivotal Role of Angoor in the history of Bollywood Shakespeares English  

 

UCL English Graduate Conference: Transformations, 2014 

Paper Title: Bollywoodizing the Bard: The Transformation of Macbeth into Bollywood Gangster film Maqbool (2004)