Ian Munro

Ian Munro is a Professor of Doctoral Studies at the University of California, Irvine, affiliated with the Claire Trevor School of the Arts and Department of Drama. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and a BA from the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on early modern English theater, European drama, critical theory, urban space representation, and connections between theater and print culture. He is the author of The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London (2005), exploring crowd imagery in London's cultural imagination, and is currently working on Laughing Matter, examining wit's relationship with print culture. He has edited A Woman's Answer is Never to Seek (2007), a collection of early modern jestbooks highlighting women's roles in humor. His recent scholarship addresses topics like jestbooks' influence on Shakespearean comedy, Middleton's political satire, and Jonsonian urban narratives.

Munro's dramaturgical collaborations include work with Robert Cohen (Timon of Athens), Phil Thompson (Measure for Measure), and Eli Simon (West Side Story). His research bridges textual analysis and performance studies, emphasizing how early modern theater articulated cultural anxieties about urbanization, print expansion, and social hierarchies.