Centre for Early Modern Studies

We announce with great sadness the passing of Professor Andrew Gordon

-- We announce with great sadness that our dear colleague Professor Andrew Gordon passed away on 28 October 2025, at the age of 56. For the last 20 years, Andy was co-director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies, full of ideas and energy, using his excellent networks to recruit stellar speakers for our regular lunchtime seminar series and workshops. An active member of the Society for Renaissance Studies, and specifically its Scottish branch, he motivated many postgraduate students and early career researchers to engage in work on the Renaissance in all its disciplinary forms. He was also engaged in public outreach projects involving community theatre events through the WORD Centre for Creative Writing at the University of Aberdeen. While CEMS was a member of the Centre for Renaissance Studies (CRS) of the Newberry Library in Chicago for over twenty years, he actively supported and engaged with our CRS membership. He was instrumental in developing the core course for the MLitt programme in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, “Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Renaissance”, open to students across two schools, DHPA and LLMVC.

 Andy joined the University in September 2001 as lecturer in English; he was promoted to Personal Chair in Renaissance Literature and Culture in 2019. Andy was well-known to many for his excellent teaching and research and for the many leadership and mentoring roles he undertook. As a scholar, he built an international reputation with his publications on the materiality of Renaissance texts, on memory and the formation of intellectual and social networks and communities, the mapping of urban space, pageantry and performance, as well as his work on cultures of correspondence in early modern Britain. His most recent chapter 'Textual Environments' in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Authorship, edited by Rory Loughnane and Will Sharp, was published with Oxford University Press in September 2025. Our thoughts are with his family, and particularly with his wife Heike, at this difficult time. --