Overview
I am a postgraduate researcher funded by the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. My current research examines the relationship between the environment and the two literatures of Wales. As part of the SWW DTP joint supervision programme, I am supervised by Professor Katie Gramich at Cardiff and Dr Samantha Walton at Bath Spa.
In 2018, I was awarded the M. Wynn Thomas Prize at the Thirtieth Annual Conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English.
Research
Research interests
- Welsh Writing in English
- Welsh-Language Literature
- Ecocriticism
Teaching
I currently teach on the following undegraduate modules:
- Critical Reading and Critical Writing
- Drama: Stage and Page
Recent Conference Papers:
'Swallowing dust' and 'knocking pieces out of […] bodies': Trans-corporeality and B. L. Coombes’s These Poor Hands, The Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (UK and Ireland), University of Plymouth, 4-6th September 2019
‘The most stinking brook in Britain’: River pollution in Jack Jones’s Black Parade, The Biennial Conference of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (UK and Ireland), University of Plymouth, 4-6th September 2019
‘The memory that darkness brings’: B. L. Coombes’s ‘Twenty Tons of Coal’ (1939) and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, The Annual Conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English, Gregynog Hall, 10–12th May 2019
‘And the young man realised with a terrible suddenness where he was’: R. S. Thomas in the Welsh Marches, 1936–1942, The International Conference on Welsh Studies, organised by the North American Association for the Study of Welsh Culture and History, Bangor University, 25-27th July 2018
‘Hills were torn’: The Industrial Disfigurement of Home in Idris Davies’s Gwalia Deserta, The Annual Conference of the Association for Welsh Writing in English, Gregynog Hall, 11–13th May 2018
Thesis
'Mouldering Quarries and Mines': Welsh Mining Literature and the Environment
My current research project considers the ways in which the two literatures of Wales repond to the environmental impact of industrialisation. Focusing chiefly on mining narratives – both coal and slate – my research aims to reassess these texts in the light of environmental criticism.
Funding source
South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (AHRC)
Supervisors
Publications
2021
- Armstrong-Twigg, S. 2021. “At night they glow red with fire”: tracing the environmental impact of industrialisation in travel accounts of Merthyr Tydfil, 1848–1881. Nineteenth-Century Contexts 43(3), pp. 291-307. (10.1080/08905495.2021.1928464)
- Armstrong-Twigg, S. 2021. ‘Blighted be the valleys’: Welsh industrial literature and the environment. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.