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Mark Llewellyn

Professor Mark Llewellyn

(he/him)

Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Teams and roles for Mark Llewellyn

Overview

I am currently Joint Head (with Vicki Cummings) of Cardiff’s new School of Global Humanities (HUMAN). Between 2024 and 2026 I was Head of the School of English, Communication and Philosophy (ENCAP).

I joined Cardiff as Professor of English Literature in 2017. In ENCAP, alongside my teaching and research, I served as the School’s Director of Research Funding (2017-20) and Director of Research (2018-19; 2021-23). For the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences I was an advisor on external research funding between 2017-2020. At institutional level, I was heavily involved in work towards REF2021 (2018-21), including advising units of assessment under all four main panels and working closely with the PVC Research on the institutional environment statement.

Within HUMAN in addition to being Joint Head of School, I’m a Professor in the Department of Literatures, Creative Writing, Music and Visual Cultures.

I am currently Co-Chair (with Kate Griffiths) of the Cardiff University-Museum Wales Strategic Partnership Working Group (2023-2028).

Academic and other roles

Throughout my career, I’ve engaged and served the wider scholarly community through leadership in subject associations (including executive committee roles in the British Association for Victorian Studies, 2006-2011); journal editorships (Neo-Victorian Studies 2008-11 and 2017-23; Journal of Gender Studies 2006-2010); as a publisher (Co-chair of Cardiff University Press Board, 2018-2022) and as a civil servant (as Director of Research at the AHRC, 2012-17). I have reviewed extensively for publishers, journals, and funding agencies in the UK and Europe – I’ve chaired or been a member of more than 60 funding panels in the last 15 years. I’ve also been an external examiner of research degrees at several institutions both nationally and internationally. I’ve also been an advisor to universities, funders and other agencies in the UK and internationally on research, impact and innovation strategy.

Publication

2025

2023

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2002

Articles

Book sections

Books

Research

My research covers literature and culture from the late-Victorian to the contemporary periods. This is reflected in my publications, which include critical editions, essays, and edited collections on the Anglo-Irish writer George Moore (1852-1933) alongside articles on contemporary women writers and edited collections and special journal issues on 21st century women’s writing.

Since around 2007 the area I’ve been most associated is neo-Victorianism (including the monograph I co-authored with Ann Heilmann, Neo-Victorianism [2010]), which has served to combine my interests in the contemporary and the Victorian periods. My book Austere Allusions: On the (Neo-)Victorian Now (forthcoming) brings together some of my most recent thinking in relation to this research field and offers some new readings of contemporary literature and culture (including political, economic, and social change) and how it has deployed the Victorian past around three moments of 21st century cultural and social crisis.

My other main area has been late-Victorian literature and culture and my monograph on decadent period writers and artists, Incestuous Aesthetics at the fin de siècle, is forthcoming. This book offers three case studies as a way to explore how incest operated as a literary and cultural motif in the 1880s and 1890s.

More recently I’ve developed an interest in the forms of academic and critical writing, specifically something I have begun to formulate as the ‘autobiocritical turn’ in critical-creative practice. Connected to this theme, my current research concerns are in literary studies and the concept of disciplinarity, including public perceptions of what constitutes lit-crit and why any of it should matter. And even more puzzlingly why we do it at all.

I also have a developing project on literature (or more precisely modes and models of reading and critique) in relation to governance in its various institutional and structural forms.

Teaching

While I am Head of School my teaching time should be limited, but I have continued to supervise undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations as well as PhD students. During my career teaching activities have ranged from the Renaissance to contemporary periods – at Cardiff this has mainly focused on contributions to teaching on modules in the Victorian period.

In 2026/27 I’m teaching my Year 3 undergraduate module ‘And the winner is …: the role of literary prizes’, which is delivered as part of a broader programme of collaborative working with colleagues at Literature Wales.

Biography

I’m originally from Swansea, which is also where I went to university.

Before joining Cardiff in 2017, I was Director of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2012-17). I simultaneously held the John Anderson Research Leadership Professorship of English at the University of Strathclyde from 2011. I joined Strathclyde from the University of Liverpool where I worked as an AHRC post-doctoral research associate (2006-07) then lecturer (2007-09) and senior lecturer (2009-11) in English. I also served at Liverpool as Faculty Director of Postgraduate Research (Humanities and Social Sciences).

Supervisions

My supervision interests range across the 19th to 21st centuries, and I welcome enquiries from potential doctoral and postdoctoral researchers with plans to develop projects in from the Victorians through to contemporary literary and cultural studies more generally.

I am currently primary supervisor for projects on:

·       Welsh decadence and masculinity;

·       masculinity and the ‘New Man’ in the Victorian period;

·       Victorian children’s literature and ecocriticism;

·       George Eliot and crip theory;

·       literary archetypes as cultural memory in politics and social media discourse.

I have recently mentored a research fellow funded by the Turkish research council, TUBITAK, for a project on neo-Regency literature and culture in relation to concepts of neo-Victorianism.

Current supervision

Ethan Evans

Ethan Evans

Teaching Associate and PhD student

Lucia Cowen

Lucia Cowen

Teaching Associate

Sarah Alanazi

Sarah Alanazi

Brittani Allen

Brittani Allen

News articles

South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership to deliver postgraduate supervision, training and skills development

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

16 August 2018

South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership to deliver postgraduate supervision, training and skills development

Professor Mark Llewellyn to catalyse and advise on research funding opportunities

Former Director of Research at AHRC joins Cardiff University

13 December 2017

Professor Mark Llewellyn to catalyse and advise on research funding opportunities

Contact Details

Email [email protected]
Telephone +44 29208 76119
Campuses John Percival Building, Room JP 4.51, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership to deliver postgraduate supervision, training and skills development

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

16 August 2018

Professor Mark Llewellyn to catalyse and advise on research funding opportunities

Former Director of Research at AHRC joins Cardiff University

13 December 2017

View all news articles

External profiles