Dr. Niamh J. O'Leary

Niamh J. O'Leary received her BA from the University of Connecticut and her MA and PhD from Penn State University. At Xavier, she teaches First Year Seminar, rhetoric, literature of diversity, and Shakespeare and Renaissance literature courses. She enjoys teaching in both the London and Ireland summer study abroad courses. Her current research interests include performance studies and representations of communities of women in Renaissance drama. Her scholarly work has been published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Upstart Crow, The Shakespearean International Yearbook, The College English Association Forum, Scene: Reviews of Early Modern Drama, and Early Modern Studies Journal. Along with Dr. Christina Luckyj (Dalhousie University), she is the co-editor of The Politics of Female Alliance in Early Modern England (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which won the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender’s award for Best Collaborative Project in 2018.

Dr. O’Leary enjoys serving on the board of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, and is the co-host of the theatre’s podcast, The Good, the Bard, and the Ugly, with Jeremy Dubin. She is currently working on a book project about Shakespeare in Cincinnati, and in 2018 and 2019, she mentored research students who worked with her on the early stages of this project.