Our Head of Department @sadiseshiah.bsky.social has published a new book chapter - 'Staging Utopian Subjects: Contemporary British Theatre Beyond the Barriers' - in The Cambridge Companion to British Utopian Literature and Culture Since 1945.

PhD students in the UK with a Victorianist bent will want to take particular note of the placement titled "Illustrated Newspapers: Beyond the Illustrated London News": cdn.sanity.io/files/v5dwki... @rs4vp.org #Victorian

New #EnglishCreates post. @ies-sas.bsky.social @englishassociation.bsky.social

My new article was published earlier this week!! It focuses on the gynaecological health of Mrs Glover, the subject of several letters in Elizabeth Gaskell's correspondence between 1853–54, and reveals Glover's original patient record that I found at the wonderful @bharchives.bsky.social. ✨

Did you read or review a great new book on #19thC periodical studies? Was it published in the last year? If yes, nominate it for a Colby Book Prize! We're still accepting nominations through 31 January. [NB: For tax reasons, authors *cannot* self-nominate.] More info here:

I was going through some old files and found these scans from Lewis Carroll's handwritten manuscript "Alice’s Adventures Underground" (1862). He originally gave it to Alice Liddell as a Christmas gift. The full text was available at the BL before the infamous hack.

"Alternate Histories of the Body" is next week! I'm highlighting our workshop, "Experiencing Academia Through the Body" by Francesca Young Kaufman (11:15 AM GMT). Join us if you're interested in neuroscience-based tools for managing academic stress. The workshop is free and online. #AcademicSky 1/4

Patrick Morgan on Contesting Earth's History in the Review of English Studies: 'beautifully detailed, intricately researched, and compelling'. What more could you wish for? The review, for those with access: academic.oup.com/res/advance-...

'Few feelings are more thrilling for a literature scholar than unearthing an archival gem ...' Our own Jade French writes for @theconversation.com about three newly discovered Virginia Woolf stories:

Very much looking forward to sharing my work on pregnancy and motherhood following gynaecological surgery in the mid-19th century as part of this fantastic programme! It is online and free - links in posts below about how to register. Thank you for including me @voicesofmotherhood.bsky.social !! 🫀💫

Day 5: Diversity & Inclusion An archivist and museum specialist from @shakespearebtrust.bsky.social collaborated to review their approaches to cataloguing, access and descriptive practice: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sec... #Archives #EYAInclusion #Diversity 📷Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Other updates include finishing a book chapter in an edited collection on Marie Corelli. My chapter is “Marie Corelli: Bestselling Decadent Author” and the edited collection is Marie Corelli in Context: Cultural Currency, Popular Fiction and the Literary Marketplace. Excited for it!

It was, quite honestly, the high point of the summer getting to put together this podcast with @nathankhensley.bsky.social for Studies in the Novel on his book ‘Action without Hope’ www.studiesinthenovel.org/interact/pod...

An exciting conclusion to my time as Research Fellow on the @mediaandepidemics.bsky.social project! Dr Melissa Dickson & I are co-writing a book ‘A British Literary Contagion: ‘Russian Flu’ and Popular Culture at the Fin de Siècle’ for the @manchesterup.bsky.social @sshmedicine.bsky.social series🦠

Excellent start to 6 months of showing how and why English Studies matters so much to all of us #EnglishCreates from @univeng.bsky.social and lots of our brilliant colleagues

The deadline to apply for BAMS/ MSA in Loughborough, July 1-4, 2026, is now exactly 1 week away!

New Special Issue of Victorian Popular Fictions Journal, edited by @helenaesser.bsky.social and @drclaireocall.bsky.social alert ‼️ The issue explores Victorian popular fiction and culture as key sites for negotiating gender and sexual non-conformity, with a focus on the concept of the ‘third sex’.

I’m bursting with pride to say I passed my viva @lboroenglish.bsky.social last week! Thank you to my examiners @andrewkingc19.bsky.social & @drclaireocall.bsky.social for such a positive experience and my supervisors @profsarahparker.bsky.social & @braddonite.bsky.social for a truly memorable day!

If you like #Victorian popular fiction, #Egyptomania or #19thCentury Art, I hope you'll like my article! I loved my editors! @vpfa.bsky.social @bavs-uk.bsky.social @19birkbeck.bsky.social @ncsascholars.bsky.social @issegyptomania.bsky.social @mariecorelli.bsky.social @edinburghup.bsky.social

‘Marie’ Christmas, Victorianists! Eleanor Dobson and I have co-edited ‘Marie Corelli Reconsidered’, a special issue of Victoriographies. It features @janetteleaf.bsky.social Adam Lewis Smith, Keiko Kiriyama, Stephen Edwards, and our own detective work into the authorship of The Twin Soul (1887) 🔍

‘Marie’ Christmas, Victorianists! Eleanor Dobson and I have co-edited ‘Marie Corelli Reconsidered’, a special issue of Victoriographies. It features @janetteleaf.bsky.social Adam Lewis Smith, Keiko Kiriyama, Stephen Edwards, and our own detective work into the authorship of The Twin Soul (1887) 🔍

Even more time to get Weird with us @lboroenglish.bsky.social in July 2026!

I wrote an essay for @bostonreview.bsky.social about what I learned about close reading when I taught at West Virginia University www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

Wonderful #Tiles in the chancel at St Oswald's, Ashbourne, part of the refitting by George Gilbert Scott. Such intricate patterns, & a fascinating study of them by Rita Wood! victorianweb.org/art/design/c...

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Radclyffe Hall and Lady Una Troubridge rendered in papier-mâché. A masterpiece, I'm sure you will agree.

Doctoral Researcher, Liam Young, is co-organising the first @bacls.bsky.social graduate conference, held at the Uni of Leeds on 20 May 2026. Participants will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the journal Alluvium. Deadline for abstracts: 4 January 2026. CFP here: bacls.org/news/188/

I'm giving a short talk about my new book, The Help Deficit and the Stories We Tell to Dispel It, in my department's research seminar series on 3rd December, 4.15 pm - 5,30 pm. It's hybrid so let me know if you'd like the Teams link.

This week I submitted my PhD thesis! ✨I have loved this project and feel so lucky to have spent the last 3 years researching & writing. I have found new narratives about the realities of women’s reproductive health inside and outside of medicine, and uncovered histories of real lived experiences 🩺📚✍🏼

This open letter to COP30 calling for the arts and humanities to be central to responses to the climate crisis chimes with the current research project of our Vice Chancellor’s Independent Research Fellow @hrmilligan.bsky.social www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/2025/op...

It’s research seminar eve! Looking forward to this session with the amazing @frankiedytor.bsky.social and hearing all about their recent work! Sign up to attend viaTeams with a DM @culturalcurrents.bsky.social

I helped an escaped convict remove his shackles when I was a boy and now because of that act he is secretly paying for me to become a gentleman. Never stop grinding

Our next #RSVPDigiEvent is coming up on Friday, 21 November! We'll hear from the editors of 3 top Victorian studies journals (including VPR's own kmalonephd.bsky.social) on "How to Get Published in an Academic Journal." Come one, come all! buff.ly/ydJkKAK

Last week we hosted two excellent research papers:@braddonite.bsky.social "We regret to learn that Miss Braddon is out of her mind": Insanity and the Lunatic Asylum in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Life and Fiction and Dr Nick Freeman,"Yesterday, When I was Mad": Arthur Symons and Writing from the Asylum

My article on 'Brigid Brophy's Ethical Aestheticism: Form, Empathy, Reciprocity' is now out in the latest issue of Genre, in a special issue on Aestheticism Now! I'm looking forward to reading all the other articles. You can find the issue here: read.dukeupress.edu/genre/issue/...

Can't wait for this to come out. Great collage Eleanor Dobson. Well Done @coppertapestry.bsky.social and all x

Coming very, very soon… Eleanor Dobson and I have co-edited a special issue of @edinburghup.bsky.social Victoriographies - titled Marie Corelli Reconsidered. There are clues to its contents in the beautiful cover image, below… we can’t wait for the work of our contributors to be out in the world!

My article revealing Marie Corelli’s hidden decade of pseudonymous periodical publications is now available to read in this fantastic FREE issue of Victorian Periodicals Review! @vpreditors.bsky.social @rs4vp.org @lboroenglish.bsky.social

You can now get hold of my book Form and Modernity in Women’s Poetry in paperback, for a mere £34.39 in the Routledge sale (isn't that about the price of a flat white in London these days?)

Our next speaker in the Science and Imagination panel at #VPFAExtremes is Bridget Morgan, with her paper 'The Rejuvenated Spinster: An Alternative Narrative of Ageing in Marie Corelli’s The Young Diana: An Experiment of the Future (1918)'

We had a fantastic afternoon at graduation today! Huge congratulations to our excellent graduates, and to our prize winners!

A few more snaps from the prize ceremony 👏🥂🥳🍾🎉

On our Brontës and Relationships panel, we have Kiera Clark discussing the extreme consequences of restricting female autonomy, focussing on Bertha Mason. Various forms of the gothic are central to this analysis #VPFAExtremes

After talking dinosaurs and nineteenth-century literature at the @vpfa.bsky.social annual conference #VPFAExtremes, we're on to Birmingham Library's nineteenth-century Shakespeare Library, which was surgically inserted into the modern building. Also a summer view from the rooftop garden.

Keynote 2 is Richard Fallon: Before De-Extinction: Encountering Prehistoric Animals in Victorian Popular Fiction. #VPFAExtremes

Our third paper in the Braddon panel is also on 'Lady Audley's Secret'. Anna-Maria Grill: "The Mad-Doctress and her Patients: Negotiating Female Medical Agency in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s 'Lady Audley’s Secret'". #VPFAExtremes

The second paper in the Braddon panel is on one of my favourite novels of the Victorian Era: 'Lady Audley's Secret'. Marta Shevchenko's paper is delivered online from Kharkiv, Ukraine is called "Vanishing Women: Anorexic Metaphors and Psychological Extremes in 'Lady Audley’s Secret'". #VPFAExtremes

I had the best time presenting this paper! It was such a great panel to be on - by a *wild* coincidence, we had two separate papers, featuring two separate books that both just so happened to have a character with the last name of Tempest, and someone accidentally selling their soul... #VPFAExtremes

The Sappho panel today was excellent. #VPFAExtremes

I've finally joined Blue-sky on the train, on my way to #vpfaextremes. It's been a while since I followed a # but I'm looking forward to it! Obviously finishing my paper on the train.

"Ouida" has been selected as the runner-up to the VPFA Second Book Prize 2025! Thank you very much to the lovely scholars who supported this book and for these wonderful, generous reviews! ✨