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Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Literary Studies

Research Team

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A welcoming collaboration of interdisciplinary research

Our research combines expertise from colleagues across various disciplines at the University of Essex. Our strengths in literary studies include comparative literature, historical, and scholarly editing. We're eager to expand our community and welcome you to become a valued member of our Centre.

Centre Director

Professor Katharine Cockin

Professor Katharine Cockin

Centre Director

Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, University of Essex

Literature

Professor Katharine Cockin
Professor, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: women's suffrage; literature and history; archival studies; theatre history; First World War in literature; science fiction; animal studies; autobiography; Ellen Terry; Edith Craig; family history; Literature and Law; literature and place
Dr Joanna Rzepa
Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: modernism; comparative literature; literature and history; Holocaust writing; literature and religion; literary translation; twentieth-century poetry; WW1 and WW2 in literature
Dr Sean Seeger
Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Dr Jak Peake
Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Dr Owen Robinson
Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: Literature and culture of the US South; William Faulkner; New Orleans; Post-war US fiction; African-American literature; Theory Bakhtin, reader-response, literary geography
Professor Susan Oliver
Professor, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: Romanticism and Romantic period literature and culture; Scottish literature; Late 18th Century British and American literature; 19th century British and American literature; Periodicals and magazines; Transatlantic studies; Ecocriticism; Borders and cultural encounters; Environmental literature; Romanticism; Walter Scott; Charles Lamb studies
Professor Sanja Bahun
Executive Dean (Arts and Humanities) - Professor (R), Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: comparative literature; psychoanalysis; womens and gender studies; the arts and transitional justice
Professor Elizabeth Kuti
Professor, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: playwriting; eighteenth-century drama and literature
Professor Jonathan Lichtenstein
Professor, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: Contemporary Theatre Writing, Memoir, Autofiction and Life Writing, Melanie Klein, Trauma
Dr Patricia Gillies
Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: Theoretical approaches to literature and art history; Lacanian theory; narratives and apocalyptic figuration in Medieval beast literature; gender/genre implications; narrative construction in Old French epic and Medieval and Renaissance analogues; Troubadour poetry and parallels in narrative design of other genres; literary tradition and Thomas Hobbes Historia Ecclesiastica; issues in modernism; expression and configuration of light in the works of Stephane Mallarmé; Old Icelandic literature; the theory and practice of literary translation; Gaudier-Brzeska Archive; Gaudier-Brzeska Archive, Albert Sloman Library; Fantasy Literature and Medieval and Modernist contexts; Operas and Literary Context: Wagner; Representing UoE' special collection of Sophie Gaudier- Brzeska; Lecture at University of Warsaw, post-graduates, on Shakespeare's tragedies
Dr Mary Mazzilli
Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: Chinese and East-Asian Theatre; World and Global Theatres and Literatures; Postdramatic Theatres; Modernism/Postmodernism in drama and literature; Post-war British theatre and theatres in Europe; Contemporary Theatre Practices (directing and producing); Dramaturgy and Playwriting (PaR and Creative practices); Comparative Drama and Literature; Gender Studies and Women's writing
Dr Jordan Savage
Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: avant-garde U.S. poetry; literatures of the American South-West; alternative knowledges; feminist reading and writing practices; environmental criticism;
Professor Maria Cristina Fumagalli
Professor, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: Caribbean literatures, art and cinema; literature and place; border studies (especially concerning the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic); literature and the environment; migration and literature; human rights and literature; literature and the visual arts; contemporary poetry; literary and filmic rewritings, adaptations, translation and comparative studies; contemporary Caribbean and US relations (especially regarding the Dominican and Haitian Diasporas); the work of Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, Junot Diaz, and Edwidge Danticat; postcolonial studies; women writing; Italian cinema and literature
Professor Jeffrey Geiger
Professor, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: documentary; media practice and theory (creative practice / PaR); amateur cinema; gender and ethnicity in US literature, film, television; island representations; Oceania and the Pacific in film and photography; postcolonial cinemas
Dr Christopher Bundock
Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century Literature

Law

Dr Charilaos Nikolaidis
Senior Lecturer, Essex Law School
Research interests: Human Rights law; Equality law; Judicial Reasoning; Law and Politics; European Union law; Law and Literature
Professor Noam Lubell
Professor, Essex Law School
Research interests: International Humanitarian Law / Law of Armed Conflict; Conduct of Hostilities; Military Occupation; New Military and Law Enforcement Technologies, including Cyber Operations, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Human Enhancement; The Use of Force by States; Self-Defence; the UN Collective Security Framework; Counter-Terrorism.
Dr Tom Flynn
Lecturer, Essex Law School
Research interests: UK, European and international constitutional law, theory and history; Constitutional pluralism; European and international human rights law; Administrative law
Dr Aoife Duffy
Senior Lecturer, Essex Law School
Research interests: Interdisciplinary Human Rights Scholarship
Zhenbin Zuo
Lecturer, Essex Law School

Journalism

Dr Idrees Ahmad
Senior Lecturer, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Professor Fatima El Issawi
Professor, Department of Literature Film and Theatre Studies (LiFTS)
Research interests: Media and Democratization; Arab Media; Journalistic Practices and Models; Media Systems; Media in Transitions; Media Policy

Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies

Dr Chris Nicholson
Senior Lecturer, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies
Research interests: Issues facing looked after children, particularly trauma, transitions and leaving care; Assessment of children and adolescents; Therapeutic Communities

Computer Science and Electronic Engineering

Dr Javier Andreu-Perez
Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering (CSEE)
Research interests: Continual Learning; Biomedical Informatics; Cognitive Computing; Large Vision Models (LVMs); Large Language Models (LLMs); Generative AI; Soft Computing; Human centred Artificial Intelligence

Advisory Board

Professor Tony Ward

Convenor

Centre for Evidence and Criminal Justice Studies, [Northumbria University

Professor J. Ellen Gainor

Professor

Department of Performing and Media Arts, Cornell University

J. Ellen Gainor is a Professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts. A specialist in British and American drama of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and women's dramaturgy.
Dr Ian Hague

Associate Dean of Research and Reader

London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Dr Ian Hague is Associate Dean of Research and Reader in Graphic Narrative at London College of Communication. His research looks at sensory and material cultures, with a particular focus on comics and related forms.
Professor Ian Ward

Professor

Law School, University of Newcastle

Ian's principal area of research expertise lies at the intersection of law, literature, and history. Over the last few years, my research has focussed more closely on associated areas of early modern English and Roman law and literature.
Professor Margaret Stetz

Mae & Robert Carter Professor

Women's Studies, University of Delaware

Dr. Stetz is the author of more than 120 published essays on subjects ranging from Victorian art and print culture to neo-Victorian literature and film, to women and war, to fashion. 
Professor Dino Franco Felluga

Professor

COVE, Liberal Arts College Purdue University

Dino Franco Felluga completed his doctorate at the U of California, Santa Barbara in 1995, followed by two postdoctoral fellowships, the first at the U of Calgary Institute for the Humanities, the second in the English Department at Stanford U.
Dr Eric Colleary

Cline Curator and Lecturer

 Theater and Performing Arts, The University of Texas at Austin

Eric Colleary holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Historiography from the University of Minnesota. His research has focused on the relationship between performance, history and sexual identity and the ways that archives construct and perform identities over time. Currently, he is working on a book about British interwar theatre.
Naomi Korn

CEO and Founder

Naomi Korn Associates

Naomi is one of the UK’s leading experts in copyright, data protection, and licensing. She has supported the cultural, heritage, charity, education, and private sectors since 1999. Naomi is the strategic lead for Naomi Korn Associates.
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