Projects
Rachel Potter is Principal Investigator on the 4-year Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Standard Grant Award for ‘Writers, Free expression and Non-Governmental Writers’ Organisations’, February 2017 - September 2021.
Alison Donnell is Principal Investigator on the 4-year Leverhulme funded 'Caribbean Literary Heritage', July 2017 -May 2021.
Petra Rau was on a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship for ’The Aesthetics of Loss: Flight and Expulsion in Post-war German Fiction and Film’, January - December 2018.
Events
Doris Lessing at 100: The Writer’s Quest (12th-14th September 2019) – we hosted an international conference to mark the centenary of Lessing’s birth. Visit the Dorris Lessing 100 website to find out more.
2019 Lorna Sage Memorial Lecture (13th-14th June 2019) – Professor Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck) delivered our 2019 Lorna Sage Lecture. This was followed by a symposium on Armstrong’s work that featured Caroline Arscott (Courtauld), Joseph Bristow, Clara Dawson (Manchester), Laura Marcus (Oxford), Josephine McDonagh (King’s College, London) and Anna Parejo Vadillo (Birkbeck), as well as UEA’s David Nowell Smith and Denise Riley.
2018 Lorna Sage Memorial Lecture (14th-15th June 2018) – Professor Maud Ellmann (Chicago) delivered our inaugural Lorna Sage Lecture. This was followed by a symposium on Ellmann’s work with external speakers Jan Montefiore, Ian Patterson, Nicholas Royle, Clair Wills and Robert Young.
Britain in the World (10th March 2018) – a day symposium on the work of Caryl Phillips
In Search of a New Fiction? British Avant-Garde Writing of the 1960s (27th January 2018)
Institutions, Organisations and Modern Literature: A Day Symposium (18th March 2017)
We also hold a regular seminar series featuring talks by prominent modern and contemporary literature scholars. Our series in 2018/19 included talks by Dr Michael McCluskey (York), Dr Suzanne Hobson (Queen Mary, University of London), Dr Clara Jones (King’s College London), Professor Kate McLoughlin (Oxford), Dr Tory Young (Anglia Ruskin), Dr Rebecca Bowler (Keele), Professor James Procter (Newcastle University), Professor Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway), and Dr Kaye Mitchell (Manchester University).