Professor Hilary Fraser, BA (Leicester) DPhil (Oxon)
Executive Dean, School of Arts
Professor Hilary Fraser joined Birkbeck in 2002. As Head of English and Humanities, she was closely involved in Birkbeck’s Strategic Review, which brought about the creation of the School of Arts.
Speaking about her appointment as Dean of Arts, Hilary says: 'The opportunity to lead this new School will enable me to work strategically and effectively with others to develop, articulate and achieve consensus on imaginative ways to shape the next chapter in Birkbeck’s honourable history.'
Biography
Born in London and educated at the universities of Leicester and Oxford, Hilary moved to Australia in 1982. After teaching at the University of Western Australia for 18 years, she moved back to the UK in 2000 to take up a Visiting Fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge. She was a Professeur Invité at the University of Avignon in 2000-2001, then became Dean of Arts and Humanities at Canterbury Christ Church University College.
In October 2002, Hilary moved to Birkbeck, where she has taught undergraduate courses in nineteenth-century literature and on the MA programme in Victorian Studies. She continues to supervise postgraduate students in nineteenth-century studies. She is Director of Birkbeck’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and Editor of its online journal ‘19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century’.
Hilary’s most recent book is Gender and the Victorian Periodical (with Judith Johnston and Stephanie Green, Cambridge University Press, 2003). Earlier books include Beauty and Belief: Aesthetics and Religion in Victorian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1986), The Victorians and Renaissance Italy (Blackwell, 1992), and English Prose of the Nineteenth Century (with Daniel Brown, Longman Literature in English Series, 1997). She is currently working on an AHRC-funded project Gender, History, Visuality: Women Writing Art History in the Nineteenth Century.
