Dr. Vivienne Westbrook received her Ph.D. in Reformation Biblical and Cultural Translation from the University of Manchester (1998), her M.Phil. in Renaissance Paratext (1995) and her M.Ed. in Educational Psychology (2000). She received her M.A. in Screenwriting from the University of London and The London Film School (2008). She holds a range of degree-level qualifications, including Business Studies (1984), Literary Studies (1992), English Literature and Language (1994), Psychology (2000) and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (2018).
Her current research interests and expertise include Renaissance culture and its subsequent transformations and adaptations, philosophies of humour, maritime environmental humanities and screenwriting. She is the General Editor of the two Routledge series: Humour in Literature and Culture, and Oceans, Seas and Shorelines: a natural and cultural environmental history. She has three books and two more series currently in process. She is an experienced international conference presenter and book and journal editor who has also published five books, sixteen articles and twelve book chapters. Her eighteen scripts for teaching Business English have been televised in China and Taiwan repeatedly. Her most recent work is Westbrook, Vivienne and Shun-liang Chao (Eds.), Humour in the Arts: New Perspectives(London and New York: Routledge, 1 August, 2018; 2019) and Westbrook, Vivienne, Shaun Collin, Dean Crawford and Mark Nicholls, Sharks in the Arts: from Feared to Revered(London and New York: Routledge, 17 May, 2018).
Dr. Westbrook has devised and taught numerous graduate courses, and supervised theses, in the areas of Renaissance Literature and Culture, Film Adaptation, Humour and Screenwriting. She is currently teaching undergraduate courses in Academic Writing, Creative Writing and Shakespeare for Business.