Our staff
Members of The Long Nineteenth-Century Network
Meet the team…
Dr Rachel Dickinson
is a Reader in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Department of English, and Co-Director of the Long Nineteenth-Century Network at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research and engagement activity flow from a specialism in Victorian polymath John Ruskin and his circle. She is a Master of Ruskin’s Guild of St George, an educational charity. She conceived and coordinated a bicentenary Festival of Ruskin in Manchester (2019).
Rachel Nolan
is a Senior Lecturer in English in the Department of English at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research interests focus on contemporary British literature, narrative theory, and digital storytelling. Her recent publications include Digital Fictions and Narrative Form (Routledge, 2021) and articles in Textual Practice and Contemporary Literature. She regularly collaborates with local cultural institutions to develop public engagement projects.
Sonja Lawrenson
is a Senior Lecturer in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and Co-Director of the Long Nineteenth-Century Network. Her research centres on Irish women’s writing, and more broadly on eighteenth-century imperialism, Romantic Orientalism, Irish theatre history and popular culture. She has published on a range of Irish Romantic writing, including the works of Maria Edgeworth, Sydney Owenson and Frances Sheridan.
Stephanie Boydell
is Curator of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Special Collections Museum, where she is responsible for historic and contemporary craft and design collections, including the Seddon Collection. She has expertise in design history, with specialisms in British nineteenth and twentieth-century design and culture, collections management, and in the specific use and value of museum and gallery collections in teaching and research.
Dr Emma Liggins
is a Reader in English in the Department of English, and Co-Director of the Long Nineteenth-Century Network at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research specialisms include nineteenth-century magazines, Victorian ghost stories and mourning. Her recent book was The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories: Gender, Space and Modernity, 1850-1940 (Palgrave, 2022). She co-curated the public exhibition ‘Romance and Revival: The Gothic at Speke Hall’ (National Trust, 2017).
Dr Angleica Michelis
is a Reader in English and Co‑Director of the Long Nineteenth‑Century Network at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on nineteenth‑century magazines, Victorian ghost stories, and mourning. Her recent book is The Haunted House in Women’s Ghost Stories: Gender, Space and Modernity, 1850‑1940 (Palgrave, 2022), and she co‑curated the National Trust exhibition Romance and Revival: The Gothic at Speke Hall. a.michelis@mmu.ac.uk
Dr Edward Webb
Research Fellow in Health Economics, Faculty of Medicine and Health
University of Leeds