Rate My Professor Hugh Craig

Hugh Craig is Emeritus Professor of English in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he has had a distinguished 40-year career. He earned his PhD from the University of Oxford and BA from the University of Sydney. Craig has held pivotal leadership roles, including Director of the Centre for Linguistic and Literary Computing (2001 onwards, renamed Centre for 21st Century Humanities in 2015), Deputy Head of the Faculty of Education and Arts (2014-present), Director of the Humanities Research Institute (2010-2012), Inaugural Head of the School of Language and Media (2002-2005), and Dean of Arts and Head of School of Humanities and Social Science (2005-2007). He also served as Assistant Dean (Research) and Assistant Dean (Research Training). His international engagements include Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the University of Birmingham (2016), Lloyd Davis Fellow at the University of Queensland (2018), and Visiting Professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata (2018). A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, he was conferred Professor Emeritus in 2018.

Craig's research centers on computational stylistics and stylometry applied to Renaissance literature, particularly Shakespeare and Early Modern English drama. He pioneered the use of statistical methods to analyze function words for authorship attribution, influencing major scholarly works such as the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016), which incorporated his findings attributing scenes from The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare and confirming Marlowe's collaboration on Henry VI plays. Notable publications include "Style, Computers, and Early Modern Drama: Beyond Authorship" (2017, co-authored with Brett Greatley-Hirsch), "Shakespeare, Computers and the Mystery of Authorship" (2009, co-edited with Arthur F. Kinney), chapters like "Attribution" (2019, with John Burrows), and recent articles such as "Principal Components Analysis in Stylometry" (2024, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities) and "Changes in the Length of Speeches in the Plays of William Shakespeare and His Contemporaries" (2023, PLOS ONE). Craig has extended stylometric techniques to interdisciplinary applications, including speech pathology for detecting language changes in ageing and Alzheimer's, and health research. His mentorship has produced leading stylometry experts, and his leadership enhanced the faculty's research output, funding, and global rankings.