Gašper Jakovac

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow

Campus

Fields of Study

Areas of Interest

Early modern cultural and literary history; Catholic Reformation; leisure, drama and performance; minority and popular cultures; dissent and religious coexistence.

Name of Postdoctoral Fellowship

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellowship

Biography

Gašper is a cultural and literary historian of the early modern period. His research focuses on drama, performance, and religious politics in Protestant England and beyond. As Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at University College London and University of Toronto, he is working on a project entitled ‘Catholic Performance Culture in Early Modern England’ (CaPer). The project investigates how Catholics used theatre, dance, music, sports, and ceremonies to form communal bonds, negotiate their place in a hostile society, and advance Catholic Reformation in the period between Elizabeth I’s accession to the throne in 1558 and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Relying on a variety of archival and literary sources, CaPer will rethink the cultural history of English Catholics, introduce to historiography previously neglected historical actors and practices, and expand our knowledge of religious coexistence in early modern Europe.

As part of CaPer, Gašper is currently preparing 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).

Education

PhD, University of Durham (UK)
MA, University of Durham (UK)
BA, MA, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)