Our research in modern and contemporary literature is rich and diverse, covering the full sweep of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries across the English-speaking world.
Chronologically it begins with work on the classic writers of High Modernism, including Henry James, Ford Madox Ford, Virginia Woolf, Wyndham Lewis and Dorothy Richardson, and comes right up to date with the study of digital culture both as a proliferation of new cultural forms and reading experiences, and as a subject within contemporary literature and the arts. The geographical and cultural range of work is reflected in our research on English and Irish fantasy fiction, early twentieth-century American magazines, reading cultures in Canada, African American literary and visual culture, Black British and British Asian fiction, and South African novels and poetry. As this suggests, much of our work is interdisciplinary. In addition to visual culture, which stands alongside literary culture in our research from modernism to the contemporary, we explore the relationship between modern literature and several other disciplines and fields in our work, including the law, evolutionary biology and the history of science.
Lecturer in Popular Fiction
My teaching and research interests are in popular fiction, in particular romance, both medieval and modern. My work is intersectional and focuses on gender, ethnicity and sexuality. I’m currently working on a literary history of romantic masculinity and a project exploring Arab and Muslim women’s genre fiction.
Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century American Literature
Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of North America
- Twentieth-Century American Literature
- Twentieth-Century American Art
- Transatlantic Studies
- U.S. Cultural Studies
- Material Culture
- Visual Culture
Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Cultures
- American Literature
- American Art
- Realism
- Illustration
- Visual Culture
- Print Culture
Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature
Professor of Twentieth Century Literature
Head of College of Arts and Law
- Modernism
- 1930s Literature
- Twentieth-Century Fiction
- Literature and Ethics
Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and the Digital
- Digital culture
- Literary and recritical theory
- Contemporary literature
- New media, software and videogame studies
- Digital humanities
Reader in English Literature
- Contemporary literature
- Anglophone postcolonial studies
- Race and ethnicity in British culture
- Literary non-fiction
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Digital Cultures
- Digital Humanities
- Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies
- Phenomenology and Postphenomenology
- Critical Theory
- Experimental Writing
- Cognitive Humanities
Lecturer
- Nineteenth-century prose
- Henry James
- Life-writing
- Textual revision
- Literary editing
- Quotation and allusion
Senior Lecturer in Romanticism
- English Poetry
- Romantic-period Writing and its Legacies
- Individualism
- Lyric Voice
Professor of Victorian Literature and Culture
- Nineteenth-century literature
- Literature and science
- Evolution and ecology
- Literature and the visual arts
- Poetic form
Professor of English Literature
Head of School of English, Drama and Creative Studies
- Early modern literature
- Romantic literature
- Reception
- Poetry
- Drama
- Manuscript
Professor of English Literature
Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Student Academic Experience)
- Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Women Writers
- Modernism
- The Novel 1880-1940
- Literature and Visual Arts 1840-1940
- The Nineteenth and Twentieth Century City
Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature
- Late nineteenth/Early twentieth century literature
- Victorian and Modernist Art Writing/Criticism
- John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Henry James
- Modernism
- Postmodernism
Lecturer in Early Twentieth-Century English Literature
Co-Director of the Centre for Modernist Cultures
- Modernism
- Print cultures (modernist magazines, periodicals, and coterie publishing)
- Women’s writing
- Literary geographies (transnational modernism; postcolonial literature and theory; travel writing; empire and colonialism)
Lecturer in North American Literature
- Late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century American literature
- American Gothic
- Literature of the sea, from the Romantic period to the present day
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Literature
- 20th and 21st century literature
- Digital cultures, life writing
- Book and media history (including reading communities)
- Transnational modernism and its legacies, the institutionalisation of literary studies
- Literary methodologies
- The culture of celebrity as it interacts with literature
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Postcolonial Literature
- Anglophone postcolonial writing
- Literature and the modern state
- Decolonization and Cold War cultures
- Literary and cultural institutions
- Postcolonial/global book history
Senior Lecturer in English
- Old English literature
- Modern fantasy literature
- J. R. R. Tolkien
- Medievalism
- Anglo-Saxon manuscripts
Senior Lecturer in Contemporary American Literature
- Contemporary fiction
- The twenty-first century American novel
- The quiet novel
- Contemporary women’s autofiction, memoir, and autobiography
- Social media and online information sharing practices
- Literary fiction, prize culture, and MFA programmes
Senior Lecturer in Popular Literature, Liberal Arts, and Natural Sciences
- Literature and science
- Popular fiction
- Periodicals
- Science fiction
- Genre
- Imperialism
Associate Professor in Twentieth-Century Literature
- Anglo-American literary modernism, with a focus on Ford Madox Ford and Wyndham Lewis
- Inter-war dystopian writing, in particular the works of Aldous Huxley and George Orwell
- Musico-literary interactions in early twentieth-century modernist fiction, poetry, and criticism
Lecturer in American Literature and Culture
- African American Studies
- African American visual culture
- Post 1945 American art
- Post 1945 American Literature
- Contemporary Literature
Senior Lecturer
- Postcolonial literature
- Colonial literature
- World literature
- Cold war
- Critical theory
- Poetics