A professor from the University of Worcester has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from a university in Romania in recognition of her work to advance a major arts festival in the country.
Nicoleta Cinpoeş is Professor of Shakespeare Studies and is the Director of the Early Modern Research Group at the University of Worcester.
She travelled to the University of Craiova in her home country of Romania last month to accept the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.
Professor Cinpoeş was awarded the honour by the university’s Chancellor, Professor Cezar Ionuţ Spinu, for her contribution to the University and her longstanding commitment to the city’s International Shakespeare Festival.
Professor Cinpoeş, who is also the International Lead for the School of Humanities at the University of Worcester, said: “The festival in Craiova is in its 30th year now, and it has become the largest of its kind in the world. The city’s university has become increasingly involved in it in recent years.”
Professor Cinpoeş has been working with the University and the Festival in Craiova since 2010, interpreting Shakespeare’s plays and poetry and freeing them from decades of censorship in that part of the world.
She said: “I’ve gathered academics and specialists in Shakespeare studies to contribute to this project, and I have written introductions to plays in a way that students, teachers and theatre producers could read them in modern Romanian.”
She continued: “A Doctor Honoris Causa title is something you read about in history books, about world-leading academics who have been honoured for their lifetime achievements in shifting science and knowledge boundaries, so it still feels very surreal to have received this title.”
She added: “It has been a very humbling and emotional occasion. I felt very proud but also quite shy to share the ceremony with my mentors, my international colleagues and friends, and not least with members of my family who travelled there for the occasion.”
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