Dr Bethan Davies

Bethan Davies For media enquiries please contact the Press Team
Lecturer
Faculty:
Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
School:
Humanities and Social Sciences
Location:
Cambridge
Areas of Expertise:
Renaissance and Early Modern Literature , Literature
Courses taught:

Bethan's research examines the global and domestic connections between sugar and femininity in early modern English drama and culture, with a particular focus on the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

Follow Bethan on Bluesky

Follow Bethan on X

[email protected]

Background

Before ARU, Bethan carried out her undergraduate studies in English Literature at Bristol University and her MPhil degree in Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University. Bethan completed her PhD at the University of Roehampton in 2024.

Her research explores sugar’s affective life within negotiations of gender, racial, and class identities at a time of European colonial expansion, with particular interests in commercial drama. This will be the subject of her first monograph.

Bethan is also a qualified teacher, having completed her PGCE studies at the University of Cambridge.

Research interests
  • Renaissance Drama and Literature
  • Recipe writing and recipe cultures
  • Gender studies
  • Food studies
  • Critical race studies
  • Material culture
  • Global trade
Teaching

Bethan currently teaches on the following modules:

  • Level 5: Dialogue and Debate: More to Milton
  • Level 6: Spectacle and Representation in Renaissance Drama
  • Level 6: Renaissance Magic
Qualifications
  • PhD English, University of Roehampton
  • MPhil Renaissance Literature, University of Cambridge
  • PGCE English, University of Cambridge
  • BA English Literature, University of Bristol
Memberships, editorial boards
  • Associate Fellow, Higher Education Academy
  • Member of the Renaissance Society of America
  • Member of the Society for Renaissance Studies
  • Society for Court Studies
  • Revels Office: International Research Network for early modern theatre
Selected recent publications

Davies, B. 2024. Review of William Shakespeare’s Othello (Directed by Ola Ince) at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare Bulletin, pp. 277-81.

Davies, B. 2024. Review of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (Directed by Brigid Larmour) at Wilton’s East Music Hall, Cahiers Élisabéthains, pp.163-5.

Davies, B. 2023. ‘Syrups and Ships: Early Modern Sugar Consumption in England’, The National Archives Research Exchange.

Davies, B. 2023. Review of Thomas Middleton’s Michaelmas Term (Directed by Perry Mills for Edward’s Boys) at the Inner Temple, London, Shakespeare, pp.1-4.

Davies, B. 2021. ‘From passive object to active subject’: A critical investigation into how use of feminist criticism 2021 empowers students in their study of Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’’, Journal of Trainee Teacher Educational Research, 12, pp.147-174.

Recent presentations and conferences

Davies, B. 2024. ‘Syrups, Salves, and Ships: A Domestic and Global Recipe’. Global Recipes in the Early Modern World: Ingredients, Actors, Exotica, University of Cambridge, 29-30 June 2024.

Davies, B. 2023.‘“To satisfy the curious”: The Sugar Banquet in The Honourable Entertainment (1591)’. International Sixteenth Century Society Annual Conference, Baltimore, 26-29 October 2023.

Davies, B. 2023. ‘The Gendering of Sugar: Women, Sweetness, and Consumerism in Contending for Superiority (1630)’. Women, Money, and Markets 1600-1950, The University of Sheffield, 12-14 June 2023.

Davies, B. 2022. ‘Potential in the High Court of Admiralty Records’. The National Archives Research Seminar, The National Archives, 8 November 2022.

Davies, B. 2022. ‘Sugar and Spice Closets in the Early Modern English Home’. Rethinking the Global Renaissance Conference, Renaissance Society of America, 4 November 2022.

Davies, B. 2022. ‘Recipe discoveries in the High Court of Admiralty Records’. The National Archives Student Symposium, The National Archives, 27 October 2022.

Davies, B. 2022. ‘Female Self-Starvation in Thomas Heywood’s ‘A Woman Killed with Kindness’ (1607)’ British Graduate Shakespeare Conference, The Shakespeare Institute, 23-5 June 2022.

Davies, B. 2022. ‘“Seeth not your sugar…for that will make it black”: Sanitising Sugar in Early Modern Receipt Books’ Reading Early Modern Recipes in a Digital Age Workshop, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary University of London, 2-3 September 2022.

Davies, B. 2023 ‘“Outlandish Confections”: Sugar in the Early Modern Home’. Home and Earl Modernity Graduate Conference, Kings College London, 25-6 February 2022.

Davies, B. 2022. ‘Receiving Receipts: Early Modern Recipes in Manuscript and Print’. From Manuscript to Print: Book Culture and the Antiquarian Tradition Research Workshop, University of Roehampton, 27 November 2021.

Media experience

Academic Researcher for BBC podcast ‘You’re Dead to Me’, 2021-2022.