We work collaboratively along particular themes and periods, while we are also involved in a number of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research centres and institutes. A number of visiting academics and other external partners contribute to the research environment of the Department, sometimes as Fellows of the Institute of Advanced Study.
Our department regularly hosts international conferences, workshops, and public lecture series. Typically, in any one year we organise or co-organise around 80 different events.
Recent conferences have ranged from Humour and Satire in British Romanticism to Consent: Histories, Representations, and Frameworks for the Future to Thatcher and Thatcherism. We organise research seminars for all staff and postgraduates to engage with visiting speakers, as well as a variety of regular reading groups. Our Late Summer Lectures Series brings the best of postgraduate research to a public audience each year.
Our department hosts one of the longest-running online postgraduate journals in literary studies, Postgraduate English, which is edited by two PhD students each year.
This Halloween, Dr Naomi Booth, Associate Professor in the Department of English Studies and award-winning fiction writer tells us about horror writing and the Boggart, a forgotten folklore monster.
Simon J. James is Professor of Victorian Literature in the Department of English Studies. This festive season he discusses memory in Dickens’ work, and the importance of remembering past versions of ourselves at Christmas.