Press release: Emma Smith to become Gresham College’s new Professor of Rhetoric

November 2026

Gresham College, London’s oldest Higher Education Institution, is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Emma Smith as its 51st Professor of Rhetoric.  

Professor Smith is currently Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford, where she is also Fellow of Hertford College.  

Her 2019 book This Is Shakespeare was a Sunday Times bestseller and her 2022 book Portable Magic: A History of Books And Their Readers was shortlisted for the Wolfson Prize. In the autumn of 2027, her next full-length work, The First Elizabethans, will be published by Penguin.  

She has published widely on early modern drama, including Shakespeare’s First Folio, and, in 2016, she authenticated a new copy of the First Folio found at Mount Stuart House on the Isle of Bute.   

Professor Smith has extensive experience in both print and broadcast media and is a frequent contributor to many BBC radio programmes, including In Our Time.  

An early academic adopter of podcasts, her lectures and webinars have international reach and a million downloads, and she frequently gives talks at schools, libraries and literary festivals. 

Professor Smith serves on the Board of the Royal Shakespeare Company, is an Honorary Bencher at Middle Temple, and an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, where she was an undergraduate. She was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and has also taught at New Hall, Cambridge.  

For the period 2026-29, she has been awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship to work on race, value and the invention of rare books. 

The role of Professor of Rhetoric dates to Gresham College’s foundations, one of seven professorships set out in the will of our founder, Sir Thomas Gresham. The first was Caleb Willis, while others have included former poet laurate Cecil Day-Lewis, historian Richard J Evans and, most recently, Melissa Lane, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  

Professor Smith said of her appointment: “Everything about this role – from the title which must be the best in the world, to the long history of distinguished professors including my Shakespearean hero Jan Kott in 1986, and most of all the opportunity to meet diverse audiences in person and online – is an honour, a privilege and an excitement.  

“I am grateful to the College for the opportunity and look forward to trying to maintain the intellectual excitement that Melissa Lane has generated as the 50th Gresham Professor of Rhetoric.” 

Professor Smith will continue the 430-year-old tradition of delivering free lectures aimed at the public, both within the City of London and online. Last year, Gresham College lectures had more than seven million views.  

Professor Jane Shaw, Provost of Gresham College, said: “I am thrilled by Emma Smith’s appointment. Professor Smith is a brilliant scholar of great distinction who knows how to convey her ideas in the most engaging ways to the broadest of audiences.”  

This view was echoed by Richard Smith, Executive Director of Gresham College, who said: “Rhetoric is one of our oldest Gresham professorships, dating back to its foundation. We have always sought the best academic minds and communicators for each of our chairs, and it is with great pleasure that we welcome Professor Emma Smith to the College.” 

ENDS 

Professor Emma Smith is available for interview. For more details, contact Phil Creighton by emailing pcreighton@gresham.ac.uk 

About Gresham College 

Gresham College has been providing free, educational lectures – at the university level – since 1597 when Sir Thomas Gresham founded the college to bring Renaissance Learning to Londoners. Our history includes some of the luminaries of the scientific revolution including Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren and connects us to the founding of the Royal Society.  

Today we carry on Sir Thomas's vision. The College aims to stimulate intellectual curiosity and to champion academic rigour, professional expertise and freedom of expression. 

Gresham College is a registered charity number 1039962 and relies on donations to help us encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.