Ashley Howard specializes in early modern English literature and ecocriticism, with an emphasis on the sounds of nature. Her doctoral research considers how sound shapes ecological networks, and how nature reverberates when poets imitate its sounds in textual form. It attends to the quieter voices—of insects, birds, metals, streams—which hum extraordinary tunes beneath the thrum of human life. This work advocates for careful listening, an approach that enables greater attention not only to premodern but also to modern nature.

Her research interests also include editorial praxis and amateur playwrights, which formed the foundation of her MA at the University of Victoria. Her work in these areas has been published in Performance Philosophy (“Lettuce Entertain You: Floral Agency in Ralph Knevet’s Rhodon and Iris,” 2021) and Scholarly Editing (“Planting the Editorial Seed: Extending the Pedagogical Partnership Model to the Digital Documentary Edition,” 2022, coauthored with Janelle Jenstad).

She is currently editing Ralph Knevet’s quirky and delightful play Rhodon and Iris (1631) for Digital Renaissance Editions.