August 29, 2019
One of Arizona State University's newest faculty members, Sir Jonathan Bate, is an international leader in green thinking and applied humanities. Bate holds a joint appointment as a Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Global Futures Laboratory, the School of Sustainability and the Department of English.
Bate joins ASU from Oxford University, where he was provost of Worcester College and professor of English literature. He is a renowned Shakespearean and ecocritic, and has scholarly expertise in sustainability, Renaissance literature, Romantic literature, biography and life-writing, contemporary poetry, visual culture and theater history. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and has held visiting posts at Yale and the University of California-Los Angeles.
In spring 2019, Bate was a distinguished visiting professor at ASU and co-taught an English course called “Environmental Issues in Literature & Film" with Professor Mark Lussier.
Bate has been a fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge; King Alfred Professor of English Literature, University of Liverpool; and professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance literature, University of Warwick. He is a fellow and former vice president of the British Academy, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In 2015, Bate was knighted, becoming the youngest person ever to be knighted for services to literary scholarship.