Category: Research

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Featured Posts / Research

5 May, 2018

War Widows’ Stories: Listen to the Voices of War’s Forgotten Women

  The British public commonly imagine war widows to be elderly women who lost their husbands as a result of active combat in the Second World War, surrounded and supported by family, friends, the armed forces, and the state. While this applies to some women, it by no means describes the majority of Britain’s 18,950 war widows. War Widows’ Stories captures the lives of war’s forgotten women past and present through oral history, participatory arts, public events, and archival research. In doing so, the project dispels prevalent myths about war widowhood and highlights the hidden, everyday challenges these ordinary...

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Featured Posts / Research

4 May, 2018

AHRC Leadership Fellows Award for War Widows’ Stories

  I’m thrilled to be able to announce that I have been awarded one of the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Leadership Fellows grants. These grants are awarded to “research leaders and potential future research leaders” to support “high-quality, world-leading research” paired with collaborative activities that “develop capacity for research leadership in the arts and humanities”. Centred around War Widows’ Stories and starting in September 2018, the Fellowship will allow me to substantially develop the project through further research on the history of war and by continuing my work with the war widows’ community and museums in an effort to raise...

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Media / Research

10 Jan, 2017

War Widows’ Stories Launches Live on Woman’s Hour on Armistice Day!

On 11 November 2016, Mary Moreland and I launched the Heritage Lottery Funded project War Widows’ Stories live on Woman’s Hour. We were given eight star-struck minutes with BBC Radio 4’s Jenni Murray, and you can listen to the result below via BBC iPlayer. It’s needless to say I was so excited about being able to do this. It meant our project was given national coverage on Armistice Day, a time when the nation is focused on remembrance of the dead, but often forgets about our duty to take care of those who survive conflict, including veterans and...

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Featured Posts / Research

10 Jan, 2017

[Funding] Heritage Lottery Funds War Widows’ Stories

I’m really pleased to say that I’ve been awarded my first external grant since my PhD. It’s not exactly news anymore by now, but last semester was so busy that I just couldn’t find the time to record things as they were happening. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few years thinking about two things in particular: how can I start working with people to whom my research on widowhood really matters; and what is my research and career strategy for the next few years. I regularly advise doctoral students and fellow early-career researchers that,...

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Featured Posts / Media / Research

1 Jun, 2016

[BBC Arts Film] Women in Weeds: The Victorian Widow

Get the popcorn, and dim the lights … Ok, maybe not. But if you had 5 minutes to watch my BBC Arts film on deviant Victorian widows (and why they could be so dangerous!), I’d be very honoured and humbled. I had great fun making it, and am much more pleased with the result than I thought I would be, though that’s not difficult given I had envisioned a talking zombie walking through the V&A. Disclaimer: no one other than me is to blame for content, hair, and make-up. A big thanks goes to Chris – producer, cameraman, editor, and all...

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Research

8 Mar, 2016

[Research] Widows, Weeds, & Victorian Jokes

I knew from the very early stages of my research that, for the Victorians, widows had a lot of tragic as well as comic potential. I don’t think, though, I was prepared to find quite so many widow-related jokes in the pages of periodicals, magazines, and newspapers. As their number increases by the day the more I browse and search, it only seems right to collate them here. So, ladies and gents, be prepared to cry with laughter, chuckle to your heart’s content, or shake your head in disbelief at these pitiful puns and witty lines on which you’re about to feast your eyes at your own peril.

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Research

31 Mar, 2015

[Events] Women Writing Pleasure

3 July 2015, Liverpool John Moores University. I’m pleased to say that I’m co-organising this conference with two of my department’s PhD students: Chloe Holland and Krystina Osborne. Take a look at this post if you’d like to know more about the conference.

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Research

17 Jan, 2015

[Commentary] “Widows Are Wonderful” (1917): A Musical Find from the First World War

While researching the introduction to my book on the widow in British literature and culture, I stumbled across a tune from the First World War which illustrates perfectly some of the attributes which have rendered the figure of the widowed woman a popular and loaded one here in Britain, not only since the Victorian period (which is where my book begins) but also from as early as Shakespeare’s times. Luckily for me, someone was generous enough with their time and enthusiasm to upload a YouTube video of his playing the original record, and below you can find my transcription...

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Research

19 Sep, 2014

[Special Journal Issue] The Male Body in Victorian Literature & Culture

The breadth and depth of scholarship on Victorian men and masculinities leaves much to be explored. This special issue is the result of a call for essays which aimed to bring together the work of scholars who seek to contribute to the filling this gap. The essays we have selected for this volume share a central concern for the exploration of the Victorian male body not only as a signifier of a variety of gendered identities, anxieties, and norms but also as a physical canvas on which we can trace masculinity’s inherent and complex intersections with a variety...

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Research

20 Aug, 2014

[Commentary] The Widow & the Law: A Brief History of Widows’ Pensions in Britain

At a time when we remember the First World War, its victims, and its survivors, it seems apt for me to share some of the research I’ve been doing on the literary and cultural history of the widow in Britain, and particularly on how the state’s support and the economic conditions of widowed women has changed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and reflects both Britain’s development in terms of gender equality as well as the emergence of the welfare state.

  • I’m Senior Lecturer in English Literature & Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and a BBC New Generation Thinker. I specialise in literary and cultural histories of women, gender, and feminism in Britain from the nineteenth century to the present day, women’s writing, and widowhood. I also provide support, training, and development for postgraduate and early-career researchers.

Guides to Academia

  • 3 Things You Should Do Before Your Academic Job Interview

    Researching your prospective employer is key to any good job application and interview. I’ve collated three key tips that will give you the edge over those who simply stick to departmental websites.

  • Someone’s Doing My PhD!

    This post is a brief reflection on how to deal with the fact that you might not be the only one working on “your” topic.

  • Academic Juggling: PhD vs CV

    Some of the most common questions with which PhD researchers are concerned focus on how they should set their priorities during their doctoral studies. What else, and how much of it, should you do next to researching and writing your thesis? As so often, I can’t answer this for all PhD students in all disciplines, but I wanted to try and give you an overview of some useful starting points if you’re hoping to prepare yourself for the academic job market during your doctoral studies rather than after, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. So some of...

  • We Regret to Inform You: On Interview Feedback

    Interview feedback is difficult to approach, both giving and receiving. As someone who has more often been on the receiving end, I’ve found directly helpful feedback to be the exception rather than the rule. So, this post is about how to interpret feedback which might not tell you as much as you want. For me, there are three phases to thinking about the interview after the event.   1.  Be honest with yourself When you come out of the interview, after you’ve taken a few deep breaths / had a shower / got home and had a stiff...

  • The Twilight Zone: After the PhD, Before the Academic Job

    You’re close to submitting your PhD, to passing your viva voce examination with flying colours, and to be awarded your doctorate. At various stages in these final months of your existence as a PhD student certain scary thoughts – of the practical kind – enter your mind repeatedly and persistently. When will my university email account be closed? Should I be emailing academic colleagues from my embarrassingly named non-institutional email account? How will I keep researching and writing without physical or online access to my university library and its resources? How will I stand a chance on the...

Musings

  • [Commentary] Thoughts, Fears, & Brexit

    I was invited to write this piece for the Times Higher Education blog, where it was originally published on 26 June 2016 under the title “‘I’m scared’: German academic in the UK on the Brexit vote”. You can read the original post here, and it is reproduced word for word, without alterations, below.  I am an immigrant. Moving to the UK was a dream of mine ever since I can remember. England was, after all, home to bands like The Clash and The Vibrators, and this was as good a reason as any for a teenager to determine that her...

  • How Do I Look? When Fear Interferes

    This week I got to be in my first ever film: a four-minute epic about Victorian widows, made for BBC Arts as part of the AHRC/ BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers scheme …

  • AHRC/ BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers

    I had been meaning to apply for the AHRC/ BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers initiative for a couple of years now, and last December I finally decided to take the time and fill in the application form. I proposed a programme on the history of widows in Britain, and explained the wider relevance of my research on this topic. The final section required applicants to write a review of a recent play, film, or book unrelated to their research that could be read on air. I offered a discussion of Maxine Peake’s play “Beryl” (2014), something which relates to...

  • Keep Calm & Take Time Off: Being Ill at Work

    When you’re ill, do you keep calm and carry on, or do you keep calm and take time off? I’ve just come to the end of two weeks sick leave. Shingles seriously knocked me out, even though I noticed it and got anti-viral medication on the very first day the rash appeared. It was the first time in my life that I’ve had to take sick leave for more than a day, and this, alongside my line manager’s kind encouragement to not come back until I was definitely better and pain-free, got me thinking. How many days had I spent...

  • Being a Good PhD Supervisor: A Fine Art or Plain & Simple?

    I’ve been thinking for a while about writing a post on my relatively quick transition from PhD student to PhD supervisor, mainly to reflect on what is important to me regarding my new responsibilities and based on my own and my peers’ experiences, but also to think more generally about what the common problems in supervisory relationships are, and what makes for a good supervisor. That’s not what this post is, however. Rather, it’s something of a precursor, prompted by a slideshow I found this morning that presents the findings of a study on what Phd students really...

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