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Professor Mark Llewellyn

Professor Mark Llewellyn

Professor

School of English, Communication and Philosophy

Email
llewellynm4@cardiff.ac.uk
Telephone
+44 (0)29 2087 6119.
Campuses
JP 2.43, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff, CF10 3EU
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I joined Cardiff as Professor of English Literature in December 2017.

Within ENCAP, alongside my teaching and research, I have been the School’s Director of Research Funding (2017-20) and Director of Research (2018-19; 2021-22). Until 2021, I also held an advisory role within the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences working with colleagues across disciplinary fields on external funding. This drew on my previous experience as Director of Research at the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2012-17).

Research interests

My research interests range from the late-Victorian period to the contemporary. This is reflected in my publication list, which includes critical editions, essays, and edited collections (many in collaboration with Ann Heilmann) on the Anglo-Irish writer George Moore (1852-1933) alongside articles on contemporary writers like Sarah Waters and Patricia Duncker and collections and special journal issues on 21st century women’s writing.

Over the last decade the area I’ve researched most extensively 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 current research interests include:

  • fin de siècle literature and culture (on which I teach a specialist undergraduate module, ‘Decadent Men’)
  • adaptations of the nineteenth century in contemporary culture and society, specifically neo-Victorianism
  • contemporary literature, specifically the development of what I term ‘autobiocritical’ forms of writing.

Current Academic Activities

Until summer 2022, I was the Co-Chair of the Cardiff University Press Editorial Board, Consultant Editor to the journal Neo-Victorian Studies and an editorial board member for the Routledge series ‘Gender and Genre’.

I review regularly and widely for publishers, journals and funding agencies, and undertake external examining for doctoral work both in the UK and internationally.

Biography

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, 2011-15. 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) where I led major studentship programmes for postgraduate training and support funded by both the AHRC and the ESRC.

Publications

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2002

Teaching

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.

I am currently extending my work on neo-Victorianism to consider this genre in relation to contemporary political, social and economic culture/s. This work is something I'm exploring in a a forthcoming short monograph on how Victorian legacies have been negotiated in recent moments of cultural upheaval, specifically the (ab)use of Victorian discourses, tropes and motifs in the financial crisis and Brexit.

With my ‘Victorian’ hat on, my main project is completion of a manuscript exploring the concept of incest in the (late)Victorian period. This will be the focus of a period of research leave I’ll be taking from February 2023 to January 2024.

Looking further ahead, I am developing work on how creative non-fiction and the form of the essay has evolved since the millennium to encapsulate a diverse range of ‘truth telling’, confessional and quasi-autobiographical modes of thinking. My specific angle on this is the relationship between critical work and creative thinking as alternative forms of factual-fictional encounter. While I say that this is looking ahead to a new area, having previously worked on the arch-confessor and re-user of life in art, George Moore, it may be more an extended and contemporary meditation on an older theme. As part of this project, I’m interested in thinking about my position as a critic and how one factors the personal into the place of critique in contemporary academic writing. 

On the even more distant, longer (longer) term, I am keen to use my experience as a research funder from my time at the AHRC and my involvement with a range of research agencies and subject associations, to think about the place of neo-Victorian studies as a field with claims to interdisciplinarity, including its association with a range of other subject areas, and its shared interests beyond literary and cultural studies.

Supervision

My current research interests include:

  • Victorian literature and culture, especially the fin de siècle
  • adaptations of the nineteenth century in contemporary culture and society, specifically Neo-Victorianism
  • contemporary literature, especially the essay and autobiography as form.

I welcome enquires from potential doctoral and postdoctoral researchers with plans to develop projects in any of these areas, or indeed Victorian to contemporary literary and cultural studies more generally.

Past projects

Related news

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

External profiles