Serkie Marchant

(they/them)

BA (Aberystwyth), MA (Chester)

Research

My research involves nineteenth-century works of Gothic and science fiction. My MA focused on nineteenth-century short stories where authors used science to resist or defy death. My PhD also concerns nineteenth-century short fiction, and my focus is the relationship between science and mortality within the vitalism debate of the early nineteenth century. I am currently writing a chapter on Blood.

I am interested in scientific progress during the nineteenth century, the development of the Gothic genre, as well as how authors reflect on mortality in their fiction.

I am a part-time student.

Thesis

My thesis studies how nineteenth-century authors communicated their stances on the vitalism debate through the inclusion of science and medicine in their short stories. Structured according to nineteenth-century understandings of vital anatomy, my project explores how authors engaged with scientific and medical knowledge concerned with vitalism and/or materialism in their stories. The content spans from the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1818 to the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859.