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B.A., Columbia University, 1999
MLitt, University of St Andrews, 2000
Ph.D., University of St Andrews, 2004
Though English by birth, Professor Connelly has spent much of his adult life being educated in Italy, India, Bangladesh, the USA, Scotland, and China. He grew up on the Essex seaside, which he left to make his fortune at the age of 17 when he joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as a (very junior) British diplomat. Having worked in cultural exchange and with the United Nations, he was thereafter posted to Rome, Mumbai, Jeddah, and Dhaka, where, latterly, he was the British Vice-Consul whose transactions were mainly carried out on the golf course. Professor Connelly speaks Italian, average French and German, and very poor Chinese, which, he is delighted to report, is rarely tested. He is still waiting to make his fortune.
He has been an academic since 1999, working primarily in the field of Shakespeare on Film. He has a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from Columbia University, where he was his year’s salutatorian, and got to shake the hand of the boxer Muhammad Ali. He has an MLitt in Shakespeare studies and a Ph.D. in Othello from the University of St. Andrews, which were both fully funded by AHRB fellowships, allowing him to develop a number of habits, including long beach walks. Professor Connelly joined John Cabot University in 2011 and has since taught a wide range of courses, including Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Italy, Creative Writing (Poetry and Travel Writing), Public Speaking, Modern European Theatre, Global Theatres, and Acting. Throughout, his pedagogic focus has been on the development of student communication skills, both written and as performed.
Professor Connelly is also a published poet and playwright, for which he has somehow won several international prizes, including the Fermoy International Poetry Prize (2014) and the Cuirt Prize (2015). He has also directed award-winning theatre across three continents, including Antigone at The Edinburgh Fringe, and has had his own stage plays performed in New York City, Scotland, and York. Until 2010, he was the Artistic Director of Zuloo Theatre in Shanghai, where his production of David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly was forced to close down by the Chinese secret police a week before his son was born. He happily concedes this was the most stressful time of his life. He has also acted on stage in New York City, Edinburgh, and Rome, latterly as Ralph in Bryony Lavery’s Frozen (2014) and Ben in Harold PInter’s The Dumb Waiter (2019); all were likewise stressful, but nothing compared to M. Butterfly (see above).
Professor Connelly is the author of a memoir, Extravagant Stranger (Carcanet, 2017), and of a poetry collection entitled Donkey See, Donkey Do (Eyewear, 2017). A collection of absurdist short stories, The Incontinent of Royy, was published in 2022 (Broken Sleep Books). His work has also been published widely in print and across the web. He is more than happy to drop everything and chat theatre whenever, wherever.
