Biography

Gašper is a cultural and literary historian of the early modern period. His research focuses on drama, performance, and religious politics in early modern England and beyond. He has published on Catholic culture, royal entertainments, and Shakespeare. After completing his doctorate At Durham University, he held many fellowships, including at the Bodleian Library (Oxford), European University Institute (Florence), and Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (University of Edinburgh). He has taught at Durham University, Edinburgh Napier University, and the University of York. As a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at University College London (Department of English Language and Literature) and University of Toronto (Department of History), he is working on a research project entitled ‘CaPer – Catholic Performance Culture in Early Modern England’.

As part of CaPer, Gašper is currently preparing numerous publications including a scholarly edition of Robert Owen’s manuscript play The History of Purgatory (BL, Add. MS 11427), a unique example of Catholic vernacular drama from the early seventeenth century, which is to be published by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (University of Toronto).

Gašper also has interest in public history. In 2020-2021, he co-run an EUI-funded podcast series Experiencing Epidemics, which considered pre-modern experiences of deadly infectious disease and how the past might help us better understand the social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recent publications

‘Northern Catholics, Equestrian Sports, and the Gunpowder Plot’, John McKinnell and Diana Wyatt (eds.), Early Performers and Performance in the North East of England (ARC Humanities Press, 2021), 63–75.

‘The Catholic Country House in Early Modern England: Motion, Piety and Hospitality, c.1580–1640’, in Kimberley Skelton (ed.), Early Modern Spaces in Motion: Design, Experience and Rhetoric (Amsterdam University Press, 2020), 81–110.

Co-authored with Mark Chambers, ‘Welcoming James VI & I in the North-East: Civic Performance and Conflict in Durham and Newcastle’, Medieval English Theatre, vol. 41 (2020), 84–133.

‘A Dancer Made a Recusant: Dance and Evangelization in the Jacobean North East of England’, British Catholic History, 34/2 (2018), 273–303.