English literature PhD

My current PhD students are working in both creative and critical areas on sventeenth-century drama, including ideas about hauntology and performing gender and sexuality. Through close integration with our Resarch and Enterprise Group on Theatre and Communities, we are attracting a good local community of like-minded researchers. 

Current projects are:

• Jane White ‘Queering Women in Restoration London:  Aphra Behn’
• Ellan Parry ‘Performance, Gender, Queers Studies’
• Sarah Grange ‘Improvising Moll - staging dialogues between queer pasts and presents’
• Cara Gathern ‘Discourses of Rape through Lucrece in Seventeenth Century Texts’
• Katrina Rideout 'Reawakening the Witch: can utilising liminality in creative writing shift persepctives towards the environment?'
• Alan Meggs 'Reclaiming cabaret: A haunted autoethnogrpahy of real, researched and imagined stories from cabarets past and present'
• Rasha Mousa 'The Image of a Cyborg in Female Playwrighting: Iraq'
• Gill Balfour, 'The Ageing Woman and the Menopause: Literary Representations'
• Gill Ide 'Rachel Ferguson, Creativity and Middlebrow Prejudices'

Bergin has supervised MA theses in the field of African American literature and culture, Caribbean literature, Welsh cultural memory, white settler colonial imaginaryies  and Holocaust Representation. 

She is has supervised PhD theses to completion in  Memorialisation in the Postmodern-Neoliberal Conjuncture;  Women's literature in Belize: Memory, Identity and the Legacy of slavery; Male Performance Wear and authenticity in Country Music 1947-1992; Models of authentic inner voice as social critique in the post-war novel; The Pink Triangle: The politics of forgetting and remembering the homosexual victims of Nazi persecution and British representations of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-23. She is currently supervising PhDs in folk horror and counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland, American Women’s study abroad in Europe, rethinking “blackness” as a racial identity and intergenerational familial storytelling in Northern Ireland. She is interested in supporting research in the following areas: African American writing; enslavement and representation; black radical history; Caribbean Culture and Identity; Marxist literary history; post-colonialism; Irish studies; Holocaust memorialisation; novel studies; transnational solidarities.

Victorian literature and journalism, sexuality, American literature, slavery

I currently supervise PhDs on twentieth and twenty-first century literature. I would be happy to talk to students about PhD projects in literary and cultural studies on contemporary fiction or visual culture. I have specific interests in the economic humanities around work, especially precarious and reproductive labour, and on the concept of politics, specifically the political nature and potential of literature.

Specific areas within literary and cultural studies might include:

• the cultures of work
• social reproduction
• globalization and culture
• border studies
• representations of migration
• contemporary fiction
• postcolonialism
• contemporary visual culture

My current supervision includes the following PhD projects:

Gavin Salvesen-Sawh, 'Harold Pinter (1930-2008): Cracks in the façade. An examination of mental disintegration in selected plays and poetry by Pinter, to explore the relationship between the themes of power and agency and his later political activism.'https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/gavin-salvesen-sawh Edward Wells, Unreadability in Narrative Fiction: A Critical Perspective and Fictional Practice

Nigel supervises PhD students in three main fields: modernist/postmodernist, postcolonial and contemporary fiction; Russian literature and film; and the history of Anglo-Hungarian cultural contacts. He is very happy to be contacted by prospective students, especially those who can see themselves contributing to the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories.

Specific areas of literary analysis might include:

Modernist, Postmodern, Postcolonial, and Contemporary Fiction

• The influence of cultural, anthropological, and shamanic forces on human psychology: the psychogeographic impact of Aztec and Zapotec civilizations on Malcolm Lowry
• The Mexican Day of the Dead: anthropological, cosmic, and shamanic perspectives
• Alienation, survival, and regeneration in Toni Morrison
• Verbal and non-verbal identity in J. M. Coetzee
• The representation of cultural identities and memory

The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Culture

• The influence of socio-political alienation on human psychology in the works of A. P. Chekhov, M. Yu. Lermontov, and A. S. Pushkin

History of Anglo-Hungarian Cultural Contacts

• British visitors to Hungary and Hungarian travellers to the British Isles in the early modern period onwards
• British attitudes and perceptions of Hungary (and vice-versa) and their reflection in the genre of travel writing

PhD Students Supervised: 

Nabila Ahsan, The Representation of Young Adult Women in Angela Carter’s Work

Elisa Gray, Decadence and the Grotesque Body: The Effects of Decadent Literature on Female Identity in the Late 1800's

Piamaria von Konow, A Study of the Shamanically-Inspired Imaginary: A Cross-Cultural Study of Shamanic/Shamanistic Imagery

Mayukh Saha, The Representation of Transnationalism and Diasporic Cognition in Selected Literature of West Bengal and Bangladesh

Joy Xin, Observing the City via Novel and Film

Ana Zivkovic-Snowley, Constructions of Montenegro in the Works of British Authors from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Dr Hammond would welcome PhD applications in post-1945 British literature, postcolonial literature and European literature, as well as in the literary treatment of such topics as decolonisation, European identity, left-wing ideology, borders and the Cold War.

Dr Jenzen has supervised several doctoral students to completion across topics such as Queer visual activism; Queer filmmaking and learning disability; and Social media and LGBTQ+ mental health support. Currently she supervises projects on Feminist social media activism; LGBTQ+ kinship practices; Gender creative parenting; Gender diverse youth and citizen equality; Climate justice discourse in the media; Gypsy, Romany, Traveller trans and gender-diverse youth in the UK & participatory heritage as a vehicle for empowerment; and Heritage, participation and technology. She welcomes applications for projects interested in digital media and visual activism, activism and issues of gender and sexuality, and youth empowerment.

She is particularly interested in supervising research projects in the areas of feminist philosophy, reproductive politics, Victorian and Edwardian fiction, Gothic and supernatural fiction, utopianism and Afrofuturism, and women's writing and the short story.

One of my key passions is working with PhD students on creative practice, autoethnography and creative writing pedagogy. I have supported doctoral students working on transdisciplinary projects and work that seeks to challenge conventional academic discourse. At the moment, I am honoured to be working with students who are looking at queering the colonial, creativity and Bronte, Santiago de Cuba as moving archive, diverse narratives from Brexit, feminist romance, autoethnographic arts-based work, stories from care, autoethno-drag, identity and hybridity in fiction, and queer bodies in performance.

My supervisory interests include the study of popular media genres (science fiction, horror); the relations between media, memory and trauma; and media and politics (specifically imperialism, (post)colonialism and globalisation. Interdisciplinary projects on media, literature and culture are most welcome.

A more detailed indicative list of supervisory interests includes the following areas:

• the study of popular media genres (science fiction, horror/Gothic, utopia/dystopia, (post-)apocalyptic fiction).
• the relations between screen media, trauma theory and memory studies - with a more recent interest in nostalgia studies.
• the historical and discursive relations between screen media and imperialism, globalisation and (post)colonialism.

Students with an interest in an interdisciplinary approach that extends across English studies and Film and Television studies are most welcome. I have also researched, taught and published on the late Victorian period ('fin de siecle') and postmodern theory, literature and culture.

I would be happy to talk to students about PhD projects in contemporary literature, cultural and queer studies.

Specific areas might include:

• Black British Literature and Culture
• BrexLit
• European Literature
• Postcolonialism
• Postcommunism
• Literary and media representations of migration and specifically 'Eastern European' migration
• LGBTQ+ Literature

My current supervision includes the following PhD projects:

(COMPLETED) Kadija George, Raising the voice and visibility of independent Black publishers (TECHNE-funded) http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/techne/for-students/techne-students/techne-students/techne-students-2016/george

Najma Yusufi, "Leave To Remain” (novel) and Hybridity in British Asian writing post-Brexit, https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/najma-yusufi

Amanda Holiday, 'Poetry, Race and Art' (TECHNE-funded), https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/amanda-holiday

Veneta Neale, 'This is our History: Diasporic Feminist Black British History'.

Hanna Komar, 'Supporting Belarusian women to share experiences of gender-based violence and patriarchy using poetry: an autoethnographic approach' 

Aakanksha is happy to supervise postgraduate work on late Victorian and modern literature. She has specific interests in literary modernism and would particularly welcome projects exploring literature and the arts (music and visual culture).

Specific areas within literary studies (1850-1950) might include

• Victorian/modern transitions
• philosophy, aesthetics and politics in modern literature
• poetry and poetics
• literature, music and visual culture
• aestheticism, decadence and desire

English literature; American literature; the novel; poetry; philosophy of ethics; critical theory

 I am accepting graduate students interested in any aspect of modern and contemporary literature. Feel free to e-mail me for more information about the PhD program.