Miss Julia Synckers

(she/her)

BA (Hons), MA (Stellenbosch University), PhD Student (Cardiff)

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

My research fields include nineteenth-century women's writing, particularly the Brontës, writers of sensation and Gothic fiction, as well as contemporary neo-Victorianism and adaptation studies. Taking a feminist historical lens, my work advances women's stories of transgression and subterfuge, with focus on how women have always harnessed forms of popular fiction to write back to systems of patriarchal violence. I seek to chart the (dis)continuities between the socio-political and literary position of women from the past to the present, highlighting the progresses made, but, more significantly, the changes that still need to happen.

My current doctoral research centres on domestic violence and the menace of intimacy by undertaking a genre survey of contemporary domestic noir fiction. I argue that the evolution of this genre may be traced through women's writing in the long nineteenth century across the popular modes of Gothic, domestic, and sensation fiction. I focus on the novels' portrayal of female protagonists who are often unreliable narrators and have themselves been driven to commit violent acts in response to sustained abuse by an intimate partner. Using a neo-Victorian critical approach, I draw on a wide range of texts to illustrate the cross-historical linkages between women's literary responses to terror in the home through the medium of popular fiction. The broader relevance of this project lies in its connection to the copntinously high global rates of femicide and domestic violence. By retracing the origins of contemporary domestic noir to the nineteenth century, my work hopes to promote a deeper understanding of the genre’s topical significance through mapping a feminist historiography of women’s literary responses to shifting conditions of violence in the domestic space.

In my Master's dissertation entitled, 'The (Neo-)Victorian Madwoman: Biofictional Reconfigurations' (2024), I examined three neo-Victorian biofictions that depart from a traditional Victorian setting to re-write the lives of historical so-called 'madwomen' in nineteenth-century Paris, Vienna, and New York. Through close analysis of the novels’ varying approaches to their biofictional subjects, I emphasised that a particular trajectory emerges from which to trace the origins and evolution of what are usually understood to be ‘Victorian’ archetypes of female madness and its treatment through incarceration in mental asylums. When read together as examples of feminist neo-Victorian biofiction, I argued that these three novels promote a more comprehensive understanding of female entrapment and psychological disintegration across the broader nineteenth-century European and American contexts. By fictionalising a range of historical women’s reactions to medicalised patriarchy in the past, these novels attest to the ongoing necessity for feminist intervention in the perception and treatment of women’s mental health in the present.

Teaching

(2025) Teaching Assistant in the Department of English Studies at Stellenbosch University, South Africa

• 3 classes of first-years per week
• Tutorials supplementary to and in support of lectures

Biography

I joined Cardiff University as a PhD candidate in English Literature in January 2026, under the supervision of Professor Ann Heilmann. Prior to this, I worked for a year as a graduate tutor in the Department of English Studies at Stellenbosch University. 

In 2023-2024, I undertook my Master's in English Literature at Stellenbosch University, under the supervision of Dr Jeanne Ellis. I graduated cum laude with 83% for my MA thesis. 

I completed my undergraduate and Honours degrees at Stellenbosch University from 2019-2022, majoring in English Studies and Philosophy. I graduated with my BA (Hons) in English Literature cum laude, with an 87% grade point average. 

During my postgraduate studies, I have published my work, organised and presented at several conferences, and convened various research groups. 

Honours and awards

• Rector's Award for Academic Excellence - Top Graduate in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (Stellenbosch University, 2022)
• Book Prize for Top Final-Year Student in English Studies (Stellenbosch University, 2021)
• First Year Achievement Award - Top First-Year Student in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (Stellenbosch University, 2020)

Professional memberships

• Member of BAVS (The British Association for Victorian Studies) (2025)

Academic positions

• Teaching Assistant for 1st Yr English Studies (Stellenbosch University, 2025)
• Department of English Studies Annual Postgraduate Conference Committee Member (Stellenbosch University, 2023-2025) 
• Nineteenth-Century Studies Reading Group Convenor & Member (Stellenbosch University, 2024-2025)
• Gothic Studies Reading Group Member (Stellenbosch University, 2024-2025)

Speaking engagements

Conference papers

Upcoming:

• 'Novelising Intimate Violence: From Nineteenth-Century Domestic Fiction to (Neo-Victorian) Domestic Noir', British Association for Victorian Studies Annual Conference, Liverpool John Moores University (July 2026)

Completed:

• 'Novelising Intimate Violence: From Nineteenth-Century Domestic Fiction to Domestic Noir', Department of English Studies Annual Postgraduate Conference, Stellenbosch University (Oct 2025)
• '"Into This Dim, Silent, Shadowy Room”: Salvaging the Voice of Ida Bauer in Sheila Kohler’s Dreaming for Freud (2014)', Department of English Studies Annual Postgraduate Conference, Stellenbosch University (Oct 2024)
• '"No Consideration for Their Existence”: (Re)Centring Female Interiority in Victoria Mas’s The Mad Women’s Ball', Department of English Studies Annual Postgraduate Conference, Stellenbosch University (Sept 2023)