Our Researchers

Daniel Abdalla, Lecturer in English Literature

Daniel's work is interested in literature from 1800 to present, especially as it relates to science. He is currently working on his first monograph, which traces the significance of scientific theories of heredity to neglected works by four prominent writers: Henry James, Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Robins, and W.E.B. Du Bois. His project 'Alternative Arctics' takes an interdisciplinary look at polar writing by people of colour, women, and indigenous writers. His work on the reading project LitHits uses digital technologies to connect non-specialist readers to works of literature and has been developed alongside Oxford University Innovations.

Mary Chapman, William Noble Research Fellow

Mary's research focuses on nineteenth-century literature and medicine. She is interested in how writing shaped the development of medical practice during this period, in particular the periodical press. Her work centres on women in medicine, as both practitioners and patients. Mary's PhD thesis investigated how different genres of writing influenced the formation of psychiatric theories about the female mind, and her current research examines the periodical writing of female doctors at the turn of the twentieth century.

Lucienne Loh, Reader in English Literature

Lucienne's research is based on the intersection between literary representations of racism and creative health, especially ways in which creativity can be used to combat racism and to provide a space for ethnic resilience. Lucienne is the faculty lead for a new collaboration with NHS R&D North West on a seminar series called "The Provocation Series" which seeks to bring HSS research to NHS researchers and clinicians. She is also working on the policy implications of the series with the Heseltine Institute.

Greg Lynall, King Alfred Chair in English Literature and Head of Department

Greg's main field of research interest is the relationship between literature, science and technology, particularly in the eighteenth century. His most recent book was Imagining Solar Energy, and his current projects are on Swift, science and colonialism, and eighteenth-century poetry and science.

Matthew McConkey, Alan Frederick Price Memorial Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow

Matthew's research focuses on the intersections between environmental and medical culture in eighteenth-century Britain.  His doctoral thesis, Nature’s Consolation: Poetry, Environment, Psychoanalysis 1740-1820, uses an interdisciplinary archive of eighteenth-century philosophical, medical, and poetic writings to investigate the emergence of an eighteenth-century ‘nature cure’ for mental illness, which he situates in the longer history of psychoanalytic theory and psychiatric practice. His postdoctoral research re-examines the long eighteenth century from a more explicitly materialist basis, examining how the rapid development of Britain’s canal systems shaped economic thought and literary form.  He has had essays published in Literature & Medicine and The Cambridge Quarterly, alongside published reviews and peer reviewing for Textual Practice.

Samuel Solnick, Senior Lecturer in English Literature

Sam's work in Literature and Science primarily revolves around the emergent, interdisciplinary field of the Environmental Humanities. Current projects and interests include: the aesthetics of climate change across literature, performance and visual art; energy humanities (particularly ‘petro-culture’); Merseyside Environments; eco-apocalypse; biology, technology and the posthuman; and the intersections of health and ecology. You can read more about his work and publications on his main departmental webpage.

Gillian (Jill) Rudd, Professor of English Literature

Gillian Rudd is a member of the English Department at the University of Liverpool, where, amongst other things, she teaches medieval literature and children’s literature. Her publications include Greenery: Ecocritical Readings of Late Medieval English Literature (MUP, 2007); various articles and chapters on mice, clouds, flowers, plants and pieces on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Secret Garden. In the past she has also written on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short stories, but currently she is pondering ponds and the resilience of flowers.

Hannah Little, Lecturer in Communication and Media

Hannah's research looks at how cognitive aspects of storytelling can effectively be used to communicate science. As well as her work in science communication, she is writing a book about how science fiction has influenced linguistic science over the years, and how speculative fiction can be used as a research tool that gives us access to outsider perspectives. She has given workshops, talks, and interviews (and even stand-up comedy sets!) on science fiction and linguistics at various venues including the British Science Festival, TEDx, and BBC Radio 4. Together with Seán G. Roberts, she runs workshops and competitions for science fiction authors writing about evolutionary linguistics.

Vid Simoniti, Lecturer in Philosophy

Vid runs the MA Art, Philosophy and Cultural Institutions. His work is at the crossroads of aesthetics and political philosophy. Among other topics, he has published essays on artists' experiments with bio-technology, and has set on several bio-art juries. He is a BBC New Generation Thinker 2021 and tweets @vidsimonit

Georgina Endfield, Professor of Environmental History and Associate Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Impact for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Georgina's research focuses on environmental history, and specifically on climatic history and historical climatology, on human responses to unusual or extreme weather events, conceptualisations of climate variability in historical perspective and the links between climate and the healthiness of place. Much of Georgina's work has been concerned with colonial Mexico and nineteenth century Africa though for the past few years she has been working on various projects that focus on British climate history. She is curious to explore reasons behind the apparent British 'obsession' with the weather. As part of AHRC-funded research projects, she has co-curated exhibitions and also worked with poet and playwright Matt Black on the production of a play, The Storm Officer, which was inspired by some of her work on historical extreme and unusual weather in the UK.

Alice Burns

I am an AHRC-funded researcher in the department of English at the University of Liverpool, looking at the relationship between land and literature. My research focuses on the lesser-known writings of Anne Lister and Beatrix Heelis to understand their approaches to land management, examining the tension between investments in rural industry, balanced with concerns for the environment and the question of conservationism. Working collaboratively with the West Yorkshire Archive Service and the National Trust to undertake archival research, I also work part-time in publishing at Liverpool University Press, specialising in marketing for the Literature, Culture and Religious Studies Journals. 

Nathan Bramald

I am a LADA-funded researcher in the department of English at the University of Liverpool, currently researching the representation of dinosaurs and other Mesozoic life within English Literature and models of scientific communication. My work covers palaeofiction from its inception right up until the end of the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the ways in which representations of dinosaurs changed in fiction following on from the scientific revolution of the dinosaur renaissance (which began in the 1960s). I argue that general perceptions of Anthropocentric concerns, particularly climate change, are in part affected by the sensationalised image of extinct life in fiction, which hinders the ability of readers to properly conceptualise geological deep time and therefore the unstable place of humanity in Earth's natural history.

Kahrie Carter

My research focuses on how cancer is portrayed as an individuated disease within literature from the beginning to the end of the nineteenth century. In 2020, I was awarded both the Joseph Rotblat Scholarship for my PhD studies and the Kenneth Allott Award for best Master’s nineteenth-century dissertation at my university. I have been the student chair of the Staff-Student Liaison Committee for the English Department and the Senate Representative for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Liverpool.

Sietse Hagen

Sietse is a LADA-funded Postgraduate Researcher at the English Department of the University of Liverpool. Originally from the Netherlands, he formed his research interests during his Bachelor's and Research Master's degrees at the University of Groningen and a one-year Harting scholarship at Newcastle University. His current research is on the use of horror in representations of trauma in Indian children's literature. His aim is for children's literature scholarship to seriously consider the effects of horrors of reality on children and seek positive, decolonising representations of these traumatic realities. His wider research reaches into other (post)colonial and Indigenous cultures and communities, disability studies, and ecocriticism. His PhD will form the basis of his further research on trauma and horror in children's literature.

Faye Lynch

Faye is a first year PhD student in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool, where she is developing her thesis on depictions of the ‘fembot’ in post-1930 Anglosphere Science Fiction, considering how these depictions illuminate our changing cultural perceptions of technology, gender, and sexuality. She is one of the co-organisers and social media manager of the Current Research in Speculative Fiction (CRSF) Conference at the University of Liverpool. Faye’s other research interests include Contemporary American Fiction, The Cold War in Literature and Visual Culture, and Twentieth Century Poetry.

Lola de la Mata

Situated in the Music department and supported by the LADA scholarship, Lola’s research question hovers around…Hearing with Difference: Experimental Sonic and Live Art Expressions of Aural Diversity through the Tinnitus Archive. As a sound artist and composer who experiences chronic tinnitus, she is developing new compositions, sound installations, and live performances in collaboration with biophysicists, musicians, glass blowers and percussion makers supported by workshops with musicians and non-musicians who experience chronic tinnitus. Her debut album Oceans on Azimuth was released May 2024 (The Quietus, New Scientist, BBC Radio 6, Electronic sound Magazine, and others) for which she won a Sound of the Year Award, and an Oram Award, which seeks to elevate the work and voices of women and gender non-conforming artists innovating in sound, music and related technology. She has received commissions from the Riot Ensemble, Zubin Kanga, Nonclassical, Lisson Gallery, Spitalfields Music Festival, Selina Thompson Theatre Company, and crafted soundtracks for experimental film, documentary and the award winning feature film STOPMOTION by Robert Morgan.

Eleanor McAdam

Eleanor is a Creative Writing PGR in the department of English at the University of Liverpool. Their research interests concern science fiction literature, with a specific focus on Artificial Intelligence, the fictionalisation of coding languages and Inner Speech in robotics, and philosophies on consciousness and the soul. Eleanor’s creative work can be seen in both University of Manchester and University of Liverpool Anthologies, with further short fiction intended for publication in 2024.

Richie Snowden-Leak

Richie's AHRC-funded PhD specifically concentrates on the benefits that New Weird fiction has on mental health, both in the creation of this fiction and the reading thereof in groups, especially in online forums. This PhD leans on ecocriticisms of anthropocentric, logocentric thinking; the enmonstering hierarchies of white hegemony in the Othering of differing races and sexes; and the nightmarish horrors of capitalism that commodifies and ‘contentifies’ in this era of what he calls ‘Always-Late Capitalism’. He has been part of several research teams dedicated to the importance of medical humanities, such as SHARED and LivCare, which collect data from across Liverpool and the international community on how charities and arts-and-health-based practices have come to help the ailing mental health of those in marginalised communities.

David Tierney

I am doing a creative writing PhD at the University of Liverpool, looking at non-human animal communication in science fiction literature with a focus on farm animals. My research involves writing a novel set in a near-future Ireland on a farm animal sanctuary and is told from the perspective of humans, non-human animals, and robot animals, each written in different styles with varying fragmentation to portray the near inaccessibility of non-human animal minds. My critical work explores this inaccessibility along with depictions of the gestures of non-human animals and the place of farm animals in other science fiction texts. Alongside my PhD, I am an organiser for CRSF, a PGR/ECR rep with ASLE-UKI, and a host/editor for The Bibliography, the English Department’s podcast.