Professor Jerzy Limon (1950-2021)
It is with great sadness that we have learned of the death from Covid-19 of Professor Jerzy Limon on 3rd March.
Professor Limon was a Shakespearean scholar, a passionate evangelist for theatre, and a great friend to CEMS.
He was a theatre historian whose pioneering archival work brought to light a wealth of material on the networks that connected acting companies of early modern England and the continental mainland.
He was the founder of the Gdansk Shakespeare Festival, and the driving force behind the Gdasnk Shakespeare Theatre. A project which reached fruition in 2014 with the opening of a new theatre space designed by Renato Rizzi inspired by the city's seventeenth century fencing school that hosted theatre performances.
He was a frequent visitor to Aberdeen across a number of years, and CEMS was able to welcome him on several occasions. He delivered the annual public lecture in 2017, unfolding an archival trail of seventeenth-century espionage involving the sometime principal of Aberdeen's Marischal College. The year before he presented the story of the Gdansk Shakespeare Theatre as part of our 2016 Shakespeare 400 programme of events. He was also generous with his time in support of 'What Country Friends Is This', a Shakespearean project connecting the experiences of Polish migrants with the visit of seventeenth century touring actors to Aberdeen in 1601, (a project which itself drew inspiration from his research and practice). In both his archival research and his fostering of artistic and intellectual networks, he connected communities across borders. He will be remembered with fondness and much missed. Our thoughts go out to his wife Justyna, his daughter Julia, who graduated from Aberdeen in 2020, and to his family and friends.
Andrew Gordon, Co-Director, Centre for Early Modern Studies.