Ewch i’r prif gynnwys
Mark Llewellyn

Dr Mark Llewellyn

Athro

Ysgol Saesneg, Cyfathrebu ac Athroniaeth

Email
LlewellynM4@caerdydd.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 29208 76119
Campuses
Adeilad John Percival , Ystafell JP 2.43, Rhodfa Colum, Caerdydd, CF10 3EU
Users
Ar gael fel goruchwyliwr ôl-raddedig

Trosolwyg

I joined Cardiff as Professor of English Literature in December 2017. Within ENCAP, alongside my teaching and research, I am the School’s Director of Research Funding. I also hold an advisory role within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences focused on working with colleagues across disciplinary fields to engage with and secure external funding from the Research Councils, charities and international funding agencies. This draws on my experience as Director of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2012-17).

Research interests

Over the 12 years since I completed my PhD, I have published extensively in my dual fields of late-Victorian and contemporary literary studies. My publication list is wide-ranging and includes a co-authored monograph (2010) in the field of neo-Victorianism, two volumes in a 5-volume scholarly edition (2007), an anthology set (2013), three co-edited collections (2007, 2010, 2014), guest-edited journal special issues (6 in total), journal articles (20) and book chapters (19). I am currently completing two book manuscripts – one on theories, political, moral and social debates, and literary and cultural representations of ‘incest’ in the period 1835-1907; the second on celibacy and masculinity in the 1890s.

My current research interests include:

  • Victorian literature and culture, especially the fin de siècle
  • contemporary fiction, particularly women’s writing
  • adaptations of the nineteenth century in contemporary culture and society, specifically Neo-Victorianism
  • gender, sexuality and identity from the Victorian period to the present

I have plans for future projects in relation to Victorian cultural and knowledge organisations in the 21st century; the current ‘autobiocritical turn’ in literary and cultural studies; and notions of credit and indebtedness.

I welcome enquires from potential doctoral and postdoctoral researchers with plans to develop projects in any of these areas.

Academic Activities

I am Consultant Editor to the journal Neo-Victorian Studies and an editorial board member for the Routledge series ‘Gender and Genre’. I have previously been editor of the Journal of Gender Studies.

I review regularly for publishers, journals and funding agencies both in the UK and internationally, in addition to assessments relating to promotion applications and REF preparation and planning. In 2017 for example I’ve reviewed for the SSHRC, the Equality Challenge Unit for the Athena SWAN scheme, and will be a panel member for the current funding call under Humanities in the European Research Area in 2018. While working at the AHRC I chaired over 50 panels ranging from large themed grants to joint panels with the BBC and the Heritage Lottery Fund, as well as being a member of funder panels for the ESRC among others.

I have previously held roles within subject organisations such as the British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) where I served on the committee as membership secretary and honorary secretary.

Since 2015 I have been an advisory board member to the Faculty of Arts at Aarhus University.

I regularly undertake external examining for research degrees both in the UK and overseas. I have always sought to encourage the development of researchers and regularly speak to events and training programmes for early career staff around research funding and career planning.

In relation to neo-Victorianism I’ve appeared on BBC Radio 3’s Freethinking to talk about the endurance of cultural and critical interest in the Victorians.

Cyhoeddiad

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2002

Articles

Book sections

Books

Ymchwil

On leaving my civil service post at the AHRC at the end of April 2017, I granted myself a period of self-funded research time. This has primarily involved returning to substantial projects the completion of which was incompatible with my Director role. Foremost among these has been the draft of a monograph on Incest in British Literature and Culture, 1835-1908. The book explores the significance of a wide range of cultural discourses concerning incest in the period. The selection of such specific dates demarcates this text as a study of the particular concerns raised within intellectual, theological, political and artistic communities following the prohibition of a man’s marriage to his dead wife’s sister resulting from the Marriage Act of 1835 and up to, and including, the passing of the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act of 1907 and the Punishment of Incest Act in 1908. Between the parliamentary acts of 1835 and 1908, Victorian culture and society was witness to an array of encounters with the spectre of incest, be it in the form of sermons, pamphlets and speeches to parliament (which is estimated to have debated the issue on average every 2 years between the 1830s and 1900s) or the fields of literature, pornography, evolutionary science, eugenics, drama, music, satire and the visual arts. This book provides the first sustained analysis of the ways in which incest came to act as a signifier for a number of divergent social and cultural debates in the period.

I am also finishing a short monograph entitled A Celibate Duet: Spectral Singularity & Singular Ho(l)mes. This will bring together two connected chapters framed on the cultural debates concerning celibacy and bachelorhood at the turn of the century. Related to themes of social purity, the figure of the New Woman and her political counterpart, the suffragette, and newly re-fostered debates about the male Dandy’s place in society, culture and aestheticism in particular, these public discussions concerned the appropriateness of male morals, female bodies and the intersections (or, in this case, non-intersections) between them. In the case of men there remains a reluctance, partly traceable to the Victorian period itself, to create a sustained account of the single man, the celibate male, in the same way that such narratives have been formed about the single woman.

Both these book projects mark a return to my previous work on gender, sexuality, identity and cultural forms in the (late-)Victorian period.

I also have further work on neo-Victorianism either forthcoming or under review with journals.

Addysgu

I teach a specialist undergraduate option in Year 3 entitled 'Decadent Men: Wilde to Forster, 1890s-1910s', which looks at questions of masculinity and decadence at the end of the Victorian period across a range of forms, artists and writers. I also convene and contribute to teaching a Year 2 module on Victorian Worlds, and appear as a lecturer on first year modules such as Transforming Visions where I lecture on Sherlock Holmes.

I regularly supervise undergraduate and MA student dissertations.

I have taught across periods and genres throughout my career, as befits as Victorianist and neo-Victorianist with a PhD on 17th century manuscript poetry.

Bywgraffiad

I’m originally from Swansea, which is where I also studied for my BA, MA and PhD.

Between 2012 and 2017 I was the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Director of Research. I simultaneously held the John Anderson Research Leadership Professorship of English at the University of Strathclyde, 2012-15, and have been a Visiting Professor in the School of Humanities since 2015. I joined Strathclyde following time as an AHRC Postdoctoral Research Assistant (2006-7) working on a project at Gladstone’s Library in North Wales, a Vice Chancellor’s Future Research Leader Lecturer (2007-9) and Senior Lecturer (2009-11) in English at the University of Liverpool, where I also served as Director of Postgraduate Research for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2008-2011).

Meysydd goruchwyliaeth

My current research interests include:

  • Victorian literature and culture, especially the fin de siècle
  • contemporary fiction, particularly women’s writing
  • adaptations of the nineteenth century in contemporary culture and society, specifically Neo-Victorianism
  • gender, sexuality and identity from the Victorian period to the present

I have plans for future projects in relation to Victorian cultural and knowledge organisations in the 21st century; the current ‘autobiocritical turn’ in literary and cultural studies; and notions of credit and indebtedness.

I welcome enquires from potential doctoral and postdoctoral researchers with plans to develop projects in any of these areas.

AHRC funding to develop the next generation of academics in the arts and humanities

AHRC funding to develop the next generation of academics in the arts and humanities

15 August 2018

Former Director of Research at AHRC joins Cardiff University

Former Director of Research at AHRC joins Cardiff University

13 December 2017

External profiles