Current and Recent PhD Students

Graduate students play a vital role in the life of the Centre, and our nineteenth-century is one of the most vibrant in the UK. Please contact individual CEntre members to discuss plans or ideas for PhD topics.

Here you can find details of our current enrolled PhD students and their projects, and some recent graduates.

Gordon Bates

Charles Lloyd Tuckey and the Birth of the New Hypnotism. Supervised by Roger Luckhurst and Jo Winning

Kayleigh Betterton

Unlocking the Magic Circle: Deconstructing and Disassembling Book Collections in the Fin-de-Siècle. Supervised by Ana Parejo Vadillo

Marianne Brooker

The Materials of Method’: Fugitive Knowledge and Romantic Apprehension.  Supervised by Luisa Calè

Claire Cock Starkey

The Folklore of Death, Dying and Funerals in the Nineteenth Century. Supervised by David McAllister

Annabel Hennessy

‘Reading the Unshapeable Shock Night’: Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Passionate Pilgrimage. Supervised by Ana Parejo Vadillo

Gloria Hoare

Are You Sitting Pretty? Women and the Chaise-longue: the Making and Breaking of the Victorian Home. Supervised by Carolyn Burdett

Janette Leaf

Locating the Sympathetic Insect: Cultural Entomology and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle. Supervised by Carolyn Burdett and Roger Luckhurst

Jennifer Moriarty

Spiritual Bodies, Material Minds: Embodiment, and Identity in the Nineteenth-Century Afterlife. Supervised by Carolyn Burdett and David McAllister

Aren Roukema

Legitimation and Enchantment: Science Fiction in the Occult Revival, 1860-1926. Supervised by Roger Luckhurst

Craig Thomson

“The Monstrous Lore of The People”: The Folkloresque, Monstrosity and British & Irish Horror Literature (1846-1914). Supervised by Roger Luckhurst

Dr Rees Arnott Davies (completed 2017)

Romantic Assemblages: Ekphrasis, Reproducibility, and the Coming of the Museum. Supervised by Luisa Calè

Beatrice Bazell (completed 2016)

The Wrist, the Neck and the Waist: Articulations of Female Sexuality in Mid-Victorian Culture. Supervised by Professor Hilary Fraser

Dr Emma Curry (completed 2016)

Objects and Body Parts: Supporting Characters in the work of Dickens. Supervised by Nicola Bown

Dr Sasha Dovzhyk (completed 2018)

The Reception of Aubrey Beardsley in Russia. Supervised by Dr Ana Parejo Vadillo

Dr Helena Esser (completed 2020)

Writing Back to the Future: Reconfiguring London’s Victorian Cityscape in Steampunk Fiction. Supervised by David McAllister and Joe Brooker

Dr Emily Fergus

“Goblinlike, Fantastic”: Little People and the Deep Past in Fin de Siecle Fiction. Supervised by Dr Carolyn Burdett

Dr Robyn Jakeman (completed 2019)

Words-in-Freedom: Italian Futurism and the Development of Literary Modernism. Supervised by Dr Ana Parejo-Vadillo

Dr Flore Janssen

`A Place in the Domain of Realism’: Representations of working-class agency and solidarity in the industrial fiction of Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Harkness and Clementina Black. Supervised by Dr Ana Parejo-Vadillo

Dr Wendy Jones

Mrs Birkbeck’s Album: Textual Identity and Literary Community. Supervised by Luisa Calè

Dr James Lesslie

British women writers and the culture of wild nature: 1789-1815 Supervised by Luisa Calè

Dr Philip March (completed 2019)

The influence of Congregationalism on the New Journalism of W. T. Stead, 1870-1901. Supervised by Dr Carolyn Burdett

Dr Leire Barrera-Medrano (Completed 2018)

Spain and British Decadence, 1880-1910. Supervised by Dr Ana Parejo Vadillo

Dr Alexis Wolf (Completed 2018)

The Life Writing of Katherine and Martha Wilmot: A Study of Self-Education, Agency and International Exploration in Women’s Travel Narratives, 1801-1808. Supervised by Luisa Calè and Emily Senior

Dr Susie Paskins (Completed 2017)

The Search for Enlightenment: Kipling and the British Discovery of Buddhism. Supervised by Dr Carolyn Burdett

Dr Lili Sarnyai (Completed 2016)

Sleeping Beauties: The Dormant Female Body in European Fairy Tale and Medicine, c. 1630-1820. Supervised by Professor Marina Warner.

Dr James Machin (Completed 2016)

‘Determined to be Weird’: British Weird Fiction Before Weird Tales Supervised by Roger Luckhurst

sitemanagerCurrent and Recent PhD Students