- JARL Start Up Funding (Principal investigator)
- HISTORICISING CONTEMPORARY CIVIC CONNECTION (Principal investigator)
Research Overview
I joined Strathclyde as Professor in English Studies under the John Anderson Research Leadership (JARL) scheme in 2011. Before this I worked at the University of Liverpool as an AHRC Postdoctoral Researcher (2006-07), then Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in English (2007-11); I also served as Liverpool’s Director of Postgraduate Research in Humanities and Social Sciences (2008-11).
From 2012 I am on leave from Strathclyde while serving as Director of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (www.ahrc.ac.uk).
Research interests and profile
My research has been driven by curiosity about two interconnected themes: (i) Victorian literature and culture in relation to gender, family relations and society, and (ii) the enduring presence of the nineteenth century in contemporary culture. The latter was explored in a co-authored book (with Ann Heilmann) entitled Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999-2009 (Palgrave, 2010). I’ve recently completed a book manuscript entitled Incest in English Culture, 1835-1908 (forthcoming, 2013), and I’m currently developing my work on the Anglo-Irish writer George Moore (1852-1933) for a co-authored book which explores his engagement with 1890s aesthetic, psychological and economic theories of desire (forthcoming, 2014). The completed manuscript of a co-edited collection of essays on Moore’s relationships with his contemporaries is also under review with a publisher.
Since taking up my JARL appointment I’ve expanded my research on neo-Victorianism to think about ways in which we still interact with and (re-)imagine the Victorian(s) across a range of discourses. This has included the completion of a draft article on contemporary culture and its use of nineteenth century thought (‘Gladstone’s Box: On Bicentenaries, Sesquicentennials and Re-capitalised Nostalgia’), and I’m now working towards a related article for delivery as a keynote lecture to a conference on Neo-Victorian Networks: Epistemologies, Aesthetics and Ethics at the University of Amsterdam in summer 2012 (the paper is entitled ‘Joan Collins, Brad Pitt and the Zombies: The (Neo-)Victorian Civic Goes Global’). In 2011 I was PI on a project about the role of the civic in contemporary culture, which was funded via an AHRC Connected Communities: Research Reviews and Scoping Studies award. The full annotated bibliography from the project will be available from this page shortly.
Academic service
I have served as Consultant Editor to Neo-Victorian Studies (2007-11); Editor of the Journal of Gender Studies (2008-11); Editorial Board member of Pickering & Chatto’s ‘Gender and Genre’ series (2008-), and a regular manuscript reader for a number of journals and academic publishers. I’ve been the elected Secretary of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS), a multidisciplinary organisation with over 750 members worldwide (2009-11), and Treasurer of the National Conference of University Professors (NCUP) (2011). I worked as an Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College Member from 2007-11 and acted regularly as a panellist, chair and advisor for AHRC schemes. Within the University of Strathclyde I was REF2014 Coordinator for Panel D during 2011.
I joined Strathclyde as Professor in English Studies under the John Anderson Research Leadership (JARL) scheme in 2011. Before this I worked at the University of Liverpool as an AHRC Postdoctoral Researcher (2006-07), then Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in English (2007-11); I also served as Liverpool’s Director of Postgraduate Research in Humanities and Social Sciences (2008-11).
Research interests and profile
My research has been driven by curiosity about two interconnected themes: (i) Victorian literature and culture in relation to gender, family relations and society, and (ii) the enduring presence of the nineteenth century in contemporary culture. The latter was explored in a co-authored book (with Ann Heilmann) entitled Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999-2009 (Palgrave, 2010). I’ve recently completed a book manuscript entitled Incest in English Culture, 1835-1908 (forthcoming, 2013), and I’m currently developing my work on the Anglo-Irish writer George Moore (1852-1933) for a co-authored book which explores his engagement with 1890s aesthetic, psychological and economic theories of desire (forthcoming, 2014). The completed manuscript of a co-edited collection of essays on Moore’s relationships with his contemporaries is also under review with a publisher.
Since taking up my JARL appointment I’ve expanded my research on neo-Victorianism to think about ways in which we still interact with and (re-)imagine the Victorian(s) across a range of discourses. This has included the completion of a draft article on contemporary culture and its use of nineteenth century thought (‘Gladstone’s Box: On Bicentenaries, Sesquicentennials and Re-capitalised Nostalgia’), and I’m now working towards a related article for delivery as a keynote lecture to a conference on Neo-Victorian Networks: Epistemologies, Aesthetics and Ethics at the University of Amsterdam in summer 2012 (the paper is entitled ‘Joan Collins, Brad Pitt and the Zombies: The (Neo-)Victorian Civic Goes Global’). In 2011 I was PI on a project about the role of the civic in contemporary culture, which was funded via an AHRC Connected Communities: Research Reviews and Scoping Studies award. The full annotated bibliography from the project will be available from this page shortly.
Academic service
I have served as Consultant Editor to Neo-Victorian Studies (2007-11); Editor of the Journal of Gender Studies (2008-11); Editorial Board member of Pickering & Chatto’s ‘Gender and Genre’ series (2008-), and a regular manuscript reader for a number of journals and academic publishers. I’ve been the elected Secretary of the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS), a multidisciplinary organisation with over 750 members worldwide (2009-11), and Treasurer of the National Conference of University Professors (NCUP) (2011). I worked as an Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College Member from 2007-11 and acted regularly as a panellist, chair and advisor for AHRC schemes. Within the University of Strathclyde I was REF2014 Coordinator for Panel D during 2011.
Recent representative research publications
The following items are representative of my recent research interests. A more detailed (although still selective) publication list, including some forthcoming pieces, can be accessed via the link on the right above.
Books
2010 (with Ann Heilmann) Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century, 1999-2009 (Palgrave). Monograph.
2010 (with Dinah Birch) Conflict and Difference in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Palgrave). Essay collection
Forthcoming 2013 Incest in English Culture, 1835-1908. Monograph
Journal articles
2008 ‘What is Neo-Victorian Studies?’ for inaugural issue of Neo-Victorian Studies. 1.1 Autumn 2008, pp.164-185.
2009 ‘Neo-Victorianism: On the Ethics and Aesthetics of Appropriation’. Special issue of LIT: Literature, Interpretation Theory on ‘Neo-Victorianism’, 20:1-2, pp.27-44.
Contributions to books
2009 ‘Spectrality, S(p)ecularity and Textuality: Or, Some Reflections in the Glass’. In Haunting and Spectrality in Neo-Victorian Fiction ed. Patricia Pulham and Rosario Arias (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp.39-58.
2010 ‘Perfectly innocent, natural, playful’: The Incest Game in Neo-Victorian Women’s Writing’ in Neo-Victorianism and Trauma ed. Mel Kohlke and Christian Gutleben (Amsterdam: Rodopi), pp.133-160.