Dr Eleanor March PhD FHEA

• PhD English Literature (University of Surrey, 2021)
• Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (University of Surrey, 2020)
• MA English Literature – Distinction (University of Surrey, 2018)
• BA Film & Literature – Class one (University of Warwick, 2003)

Dr Eleanor March graduated with a BA in Film & Literature from the University of Warwick in 2003, and worked in marketing communications for over a decade, in the public, private and charity sectors. In 2016, she returned to academia, completing an MA in English Literature at the University of Surrey in 2017, followed by a PhD in English Literature at the same institution in 2021. She joined the University of Birmingham in 2021, as Research Fellow in Interdisciplinary Prison Research, working on The Persistence of the Victorian Prison project.

Dr Eleanor March is an interdisciplinary prison researcher, working across carceral geography, criminology, literary and cultural studies, and history. She researches cultural representations of the carceral, focusing on prisoner writing, literary and media representations of prisons, and prison history.

Her PhD thesis “Crossing the prison boundary: Prisoner writing as an act of translation” was an interdisciplinary study that employed concepts from carceral geography, literary studies, translation studies and criminology to analyse contemporary writing by UK prisoners. Additional research interests include suffragette prisoner writing, and the representation of prisons in the novels of Margaret Atwood.

She is currently working on the ESRC-funded project The Persistence of the Victorian Prison, which considers the ‘persistence’ of Victorian prisons in the contemporary UK, exploring how and with what implications Victorian prisons continue to operate, and whether their operation should continue.

Dr Eleanor March has worked on a number of prison arts projects, including volunteering with the prison arts charity Koestler Arts, and co-founding a prison writing group at HMP Send.