Prue Shaw studied at the University of Sydney, where she gained First Class
degrees in English and in Italian, and was a Teaching Fellow in the Department
of English for a year. She won the Wentworth Travelling Fellowship for study
abroad, an award made once every three years to ‘the candidate of highest merit
among students and graduates of the Faculty of Arts’. She then took degrees at
the Universities of Florence (Dott. In Lett.) and Oxford (B. Phil in General and
Comparative Literature). She taught Italian Language and Literature at the
University of Cambridge (where she was a Fellow of New Hall) and the University
of London (Bedford College, and, from 1984, University College London).

She is the editor of the edizione nazionale of Dante’s medieval Latin treatise Monarchia (the edizione nazionale is the official critical text of the poet’s works published by the Società Dantesca Italiana). She is the only non-Italian to have achieved the distinction of being asked to edit a text in this prestigious series.

Her research for the Commedia DVD was generously supported by The British
Academy, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Arts and Humanities Research Council
and the Modern Humanities Research Foundation. The research for the Monarchia DVD was supported by The British Academy. Samples of the DVDs and details of how to buy them can be found at  www.sd-editions.com and www.sismelfirenze.it

Her translation of the Monarchia into English is used on the Princeton Dante
Project website www.princeton.edu/dante/ and the Società Dantesca Italiana website www.danteonline.it

She acted as consultant to the Royal Academy for their exhibition Botticelli’s Dante: the Drawings for the Divine Comedy. She is the Società Dantesca Italiana’s consultant for the English language section of their website.

In May 2014 she was awarded a medal by the city of Florence for her contribution to Dante studies.