I have a PhD in linguistics from the University of Chicago, but all of my scholarly work over the past two decades has had to do with Shakespeare, Elizabethan theater history, and biography. I'm a member of the Shakespeare Association of America and the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society, and I've done extensive archival research focused on livery companies, apprenticeship, and places other than playhouses (such as inns and taverns) where plays were performed in sixteenth-century London. I have had articles and reviews published in Shakespeare Quarterly, Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare Newsletter, Shakespeare Bulletin, Early Theatre, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, and Research Opportunities in Medieval and Renaissance Drama. I wrote 37 articles for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and 71 articles for the forthcoming Stanford Encyclopedia of Shakespeare, being published online. I also have two chapters (on "Players, Livery Companies, and Apprentices" and "Innyard Playhouses") in the Oxford Handbook on Theatre History and three chapters (on "The Authorship Question", "John Heminges and Henry Condell", and "Richard Burbage") in The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare.

Since 1999, I've also maintained a Biographical Index of English Drama Before 1660, available online at https://ShakespeareAuthorship.com/bd/, which will eventually become a full-fledged Biographical Dictionary.

Specifically on authorship-related matters -- in addition to maintaining the Shakespeare Authorship page with Terry Ross -- I wrote a chapter called "The Question of Authorship" for the volume Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide (2003) and the above-mentioned chapter on the Authorship Question for The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare (2016); in April 2001 I was the co-leader (with Jonathan Hope) of a seminar on "Theory and Methodology in Authorship and Attribution Studies" at the World Shakespeare Congress in Valencia, Spain; and I have discussed Shakespeare and the authorship question in newspapers and on radio, including the BBC and National Public Radio. I'm also a Chartered Financial Analyst who makes my living as a mutual fund analyst for Morningstar in Chicago.

David Kathman