About us
Manchester’s fascinating history and wide range of regional and diasporic communities make it the ideal place to explore the nineteenth century.
The Long Nineteenth-Century Network brings together academics and students specialising in history, literature and the arts. Our researchers’ expertise spans from the early Romantic period up to the onset of the First World War, as well as Neo-Victorianism.
We work closely with the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies, the Special Collections Museum, the Manchester Centre for Public History and Heritage, the Centre for Place Writing and the Manchester Fashion Institute.
A nineteenth-century research group has been active in the English Department since 2014, organising public events, exhibitions and reading groups. We host the North West Long Nineteenth-Century Seminar three times a year.
There is a vibrant community of postgraduates studying the nineteenth century with us. We encourage our PhD and MA students to collaborate and get involved with the centre. We also offer a range of specialist units on our MA programmes.
Our partners and specialisms:
Our cultural partners include:
- Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre
- Elizabeth Gaskell’s House and The Gaskell Society
- The People’s History Museum
- The Science and Industry Museum
- The Portico Library
- The Guild of St George
- Manchester Art Gallery
- Manchester Histories
- Ordsall Hall, Salford
- Brontë Parsonage Museum, Haworth
- Speke Hall, Liverpool
Our specialisms include:
- Gothic fiction and architecture (the supernatural, vampires, Ann Radcliffe, Matthew Lewis, haunted houses, European Gothic, historical fiction)
- Industrial Manchester, urbanisation and globalisation (Victorian crime, detection and criminal underworlds, Elizabeth Gaskell, Manchester and diasporic communities, Orientalism, American slavery, mobilities and horizons, shopping, the suffrage movement, sport/leisure, heritage)
- Art and material culture (Arts & Crafts, John Ruskin, textiles, magazines, print culture, global nineteenth-century periodicals, fashion, country houses in the North West)
