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Nineteenth-century and Victorian studies

Birkbeck is a world-leading institution in nineteenth-century and Victorian studies.

A large number of our recent PhDs in nineteenth-century and Victorian studies have successfully obtained permanent academic posts in leading universities in Britain, the United States and other countries. We offer our PhD students professional development and have an excellent record securing postgraduate studentships from major funding bodies.

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  • Michael Baron: has written on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Yeats, Larkin, Heaney, and other writers. He was editor of the journal English for ten years. His current research is on the cultural significance of dialect texts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, provincial publishing in that period, and manuscript albums of the 1820s. His publications include Language and Relationship in Wordsworth’s Writing (Longman, 1995) and Alfred Lord Tennyson (Everyman, 1996, 2002).
  • Heike Bauer: Heike Bauer’s research and teaching interests focus on nineteenth and early twentieth-century literature and culture, and the histories and theories of sexuality and gender. She has published on sexology, female and male same-sex sexuality, translation and cultural exchange, and on questions of gender, “race” and discipline formation. Her publications include English Literary Sexology: Translations of Inversion 1860-1930 (Palgrave 2009) and Women and Cross-Dressing, 1800-1930 (Routledge, 2006).
  • Nicola Bown: Nicola Bown's research is focused on the Victorian period and ranges across visual culture, literature, history of science and material culture. Her book Fairies in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2001), looked at the Victorian fascination with the seemingly trivial figure of the fairy and at its representations in painting, photography, literature and science writing.
  • Carolyn Burdett: Carolyn Burdett's research interests have focussed on the literature, culture and politics of the period 1880-1920. Her monograph on the South African-born novelist, Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), Olive Schreiner and the Progress of Feminism: Evolution, Gender, Empire (Palgrave, 2001), explores the relationship between feminism and anti-imperialism, post-Darwinian evolutionary thought, and ideas of progress at the fin de siècle.
  • Steve Connor: Steve Connor is Professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck. His most recent books are The Book of Skin (London: Reaktion, 2004) and Fly on the history of the fly in poetry, painting, religion and science (London: Reaktion 2006).
  • Hilary Fraser: Hilary Fraser's research interests range widely in the nineteenth century. Her 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), English Prose of the Nineteenth Century (with Daniel Brown, Longman Literature in English Series, 1997).
  • Robert Inglesfield: Robert Inglesfield has research interests in eighteenth and nineteenth-century poetry, particularly Thomson and the eighteenth-century reflective tradition, Wordsworth and Browning. He is currently editing two volumes of the Oxford edition of Robert Browning's Poetical Works. Find out more about Robert Inglesfied's work here.
  • Roger Luckhurst: Roger Luckhurst is Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature. His research interests include science fiction, trauma and the history and cultures of science.
  • Ana Parejo Vadillo: Ana Parejo Vadillo’s research is interdisciplinary and falls into three broad areas: the urban and cosmopolitan, aestheticism and decadence, and nineteenth-century poetics. Her publications include Women Poets and Urban Aestheticism: Passengers of Modernity (2005) and Michael Field, the Poet: Published and Manuscript Materials (2009). She is the Chair of the London Nineteenth-Century Seminar. Find out more about Ana Parejo Vadillo's work.
  • Isobel Armstrong: Founder of Birkbeck’s Nineteenth-Century Centre and of the London Nineteenth-Century Seminar, Professor Armstrong is a leading critic of nineteenth-century poetry, women's writing and literary theory. Her publications include Victorian Poetry: Poetry, Politics and Poetics (1993), The Radical Aesthetic (2000) and Victorian Glassworlds: Glass Culture and the Imagination 1830-1880 (2008), which was shortlisted for The British Society for Literature and Science Book Prize 2009. She has also edited the Oxford anthology of Nineteenth-Century Women Poets, and is the co-founder and editor of the journal Women: a Cultural Review.
  • Laurel Brake: Emeritus Professor of Literature and Print Culture, her research interests are in print culture, gender, computing in the humanities and Walter Pater. Publications include Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008), Print in Transition (2001), Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism (2009) and The Lure of the Illustration in the Nineteenth Century (2009).
  • Michael Slater: Professor Slater’s research focuses on the life and work of Charles Dickens. From 1958 to 1977 he edited The Dickensian. He has served as President both of the International Dickens Fellowship and of the Dickens Society of America, and has always been extremely actively involved in the affairs of Dickens House Museum. His latest book, a biography of Charles Dickens, was published Yale in August 2009.

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Victorian Studies is just one of our areas of expertise

Victorian Studies is just one of our areas of expertise

 
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