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Holly Furneaux
PhD Victorian Studies
Dr Holly Furneaux on how she progressed from an MA to a PhD at Birkbeck and never looked back:
'Having had a totally positive experience of Birkbeck's MA Victorian Studies, I went on to do a PhD entitled "Homoeroticism in the Novels of Charles Dickens".
'Staying in the Department of English and Humanities allowed me to continue to work with my supervisor, who was wonderfully supportive. It also meant I could get straight into research in an environment where I was already comfortable, as one of a vibrant community of postgraduates. Although I had been concerned that my thesis would be too much of a solitary activity, I found that the number of postgraduate reading groups and departmental lectures kept any feelings of isolation and loneliness at bay.
'The School provided lots of scope and support for supplementing research. Along with a fellow postgraduate, Anne Schwan, I organised a successful international conference on "Dickens and Sex", for which we had enormous financial and practical support from the School. This and the edited collection that developed from the conference were some of the most rewarding outcomes of my doctoral study.
'I was offered training which helped me to give papers at other events. Most notably, I was selected to represent Birkbeck at the University of California's annual "Dickens Universe", a week-long retreat in the hilltops of UC Santa Cruz. Sun, sea, sand and Dickens – my personal heaven!
'These activities were hugely beneficial when I came to look for an academic job after gaining my PhD. In a notoriously competitive job market, I've found Birkbeck's provision of a wider range of necessary skills, beyond the thesis, invaluable. I particularly enjoyed the pleasures of teaching Birkbeck's unique undergraduates.
'I was also able to work as an editorial assistant on the College's new academic web journal 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, under the editorship of Professor Hilary Fraser, who set it up to disseminate the work of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies to a wider academic audience.
'I am now in a permanent post as a lecturer in Victorian Studies at the University of Leicester, where I am working on a book called Queer Dickens. Already Birkbeck and Leicester have joined up for a one-day conference on Our Mutual Friend.
