The Victorian Studies Centre

PhD students

Current students

Name  Research Project Title 
 Rawan Alnefaee  The Brontë Family's Writings About Illness and Recovery
 Hannah Burden  Reading with the Queen: The Literary Consumption and Contribution of Queen Victoria
 Michelle Dean  The Life and Works of the Jourdain Sisters
 Jacqueline Favaloro  Charlotte Brontë and the Power of Faerie
 Hayley Flynn  The Dream Debate and the Periodical in the 1860s
 Florence Heath  Self and Sisterhood: Female Identity and Relationships in the Lives and Writing of the Potter Sisters
 Azza Hussen  What it Means to Dream: Dickens’s Use of Dreams in the Context of Early to Mid-Nineteenth Century Dream Theories
 Miyuki Kamezawa  Thomas Hardy and Masculinity
 Chelsey Pinney  'A Theatre of Calamity': Tracing the Carnivalization of Sentiment in Nineteenth-Century Sensation Literature
 Emma Probett  Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell
 Kris Siefken  Negotiating the Labyrinth: The Interplay of City and Psychology in Dickens's Fiction
 Lisu Wang  Elizabeth Gaskell and Victorian Society
 Wen-Wei Wu  Empire, Pathology and the Oriental Imagery: On Victorian Narratives of Addiction
 Amber Vella  The Pregnant Body in Late Georgian Britain

When I was considering postgraduate study the interdisciplinary nature of Leicester's Victorian Studies Centre greatly appealed to me, including the opportunity to mix modules like 'The Brontës', 'Victorian Society', and 'Evolution and Entropy'. I was also impressed by the Library's extensive collection of Victorian periodicals, representing the Centre's historic interest in nineteenth-century print culture. Throughout my MA and PhD in the Centre, friendly discussions with tutors (and guest speakers on the always fascinating Spring Seminar Series) fleshed out my view both of Victorian culture and of academic careers. Without doubt both the expansive scholarly and career-focused training I received at Leicester were instrumental in making my subsequent application for a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship successful. I am currently completing this Fellowship at the University of Birmingham.

Richard Fallon, past PhD student

Past students

Name  Research title
 Mona Albassam The Politics of the Female Plain Body
 Sophie Almond The Medical Women's Federation, 1879-1948 
 Ruth Ashton Disabled Domesticity: Representations of Disability in Nineteenth-Century Literature 
 Derek Ball Mathematics in George Eliot's Novels 
 Kathleen L. Bell The Diaspora of Dickens: Charles Dickens and the Writers of the American South
 Rachel Bates (nee Anchor) Curating the Crimea: The Cultural Afterlife of a Conflict 
 Danielle Benyon-Payne The Suicide Question in Late-Victorian Gothic Fiction: Representations of Suicide in their Historical, Cultural and Social Contexts 
 Jenny Bloodworth Clotilde Graves: Journalist and Playwright
 Susan Boettcher An Edition of the Journals of Adlard Welby, 1843-56
 Lisa Coar 'Abandon far all ye who enter here': (Dis)ordering the Male Body, 1800-1910
 Anjna Chouhan Shakespearean Drama in the Victorian Period
 Richard Fallon Reshaping Dinosaurs: The Popularisation of Palaeontology in Anglo-American Culture, 1877-1921. Now published.
 Katie Heathman The Debased Street Music of the Vulgar: Folk Song, the Novel and the City in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Britain
 Tomoko Kanda The Early Journalism of Eliza Meteyard
 Catherine Malcolmson Constructing Charles Dickens, 1900-1940
 Clare Mendes Representations of the New Woman in the 1890s Woman's Press 
 Jennifer Miller Dickensian Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century Theatrical Adaptations of the Novels 
 Pamela Ormrod 'An Entirely Different Order of Writer': A Reevaluation of the Novels of Dinah Mulock Craik
 Nazia Parveen Aestheticism in Pre-Raphaelitism and Science 
 Jonathan Potter Visuality and Representation in British Fiction 1840-1870 
 Margriet Schippers Elizabeth Gaskell, Citizen of the World: Civic Lessons. Now published
 Rebecca Shuttleworth (MPhil) Susanna Watts and Elizabeth Heyrick: Women's Writing in the Midlands 1750-1850 
 Natasha Stoyce 'Theatres of War': The Experiences of the Serbian Unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals During the Great War 
 Mai Tsumura (MPhil) Love and Justice: John Ruskin's Theory and Practice of Charity 
 Tadakazu Suzuki British Biography and the Science of Selfhood, 1895-1939 
 Matthew Wale 'The Sympathy of a Crowd': Periodicals and the Practices of Natural History in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Now published

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