Research clusters

Members of the English department regularly lead research clusters in the Faculty of Arts, bringing together researchers from across the disciplines.

• 'Borders and Borderlands' (Professor Helen Fulton)
  This group brings together researchers in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences to explore representations of border spaces and cultural practices in unstable multicultural and multilingual border environments.

• 'Early Modern Studies' (Dr Sebastiaan Verweij and Dr Kenneth Austin)
  A cross-disciplinary group of researchers working in the Early Modern period and sharing critical approaches, new methodologies, and ideas for grant bids.

• 'Global Feminisms' (Dr Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, Dr Sumita Mukherjee, and Dr Tara Puri)
  Bringing researchers together from across the Faculty, this group explores feminist approaches to the understanding and representation of human experience.

• 'Bodies of Water' (Dr Michael Malay)
  This group focuses on the sea as a physical and environmental phenomenon around which literary and historical texts find their purpose and meaning.

Public engagement

The Department has ongoing partnerships with many organisations and institutions in and around Bristol, providing a focus for lectures, readings, debates, and similar public events. Recent events include:

• MShed Museum: a debate and readings connected with the experience of slavery

• Georgian House Museum: readings from creative writers on the history of slavery

• SS Great Britain: collaborative events on ‘literature and the sea’

• Tobacco Factory: lectures and readings for theatre audiences