About us

The Eighteenth-Century Research Group, founded in 2009, looks at a wide variety of media across Europe in the eighteenth century. Co-ordinated by staff from the School of Arts, the group brings together researchers from various departments across Birkbeck to collaborate and foster dialogue across disciplinary specialisations.

In addition to regular conferences and public lectures, there is a termly reading group which provides opportunities to read and discuss work-in-progress in a friendly interdisciplinary environment.

Group co-ordinators (School of Arts)

• Luisa Calè (English and Humanities). Research: visual culture; literary adaptation; collecting; spectatorship; the book as gallery/the book as archive; Blake and extra-illustration.
• Ann Lewis (Cultures and Languages). Research: the representation of prostitutes in 18th-century France; the relationship of text and image (especially illustrations to eighteenth-century novels); sensibility and the novel.
• Kate Retford (History of Art and Screen Media). Research: British portraiture, esp. the conversation piece; gender; the country house collection; art as historical evidence.
• Emily Senior (English and Humanities). Research: British and Atlantic intercultural encounters; literature, science and medicine, natural history and the novel.