An aerial view of Singleton Campus and the bay opposite

Dr Marie-luise Kohlke

Senior Lecturer, English Literature

Telephone number

+44 (0) 1792 604314

Email address

Office - 211
Second Floor
Keir Hardie Building
Singleton Campus
Available For Postgraduate Supervision

About

Dr Marie-Luise (Mel) Kohlke is a leading researcher in the field of Neo-Victorian Studies, serving as the General Editor of the ground-breaking, open-access e-journal Neo-Victorian Studies (http://neovictorianstudies.com/), which she founded at Swansea University in 2008, and as Series Co-Editor of Brill|Rodopi’s Neo-Victorian Series. Additionally, she is currently co-editing a 2021 special issue on ‘Neo-Victorian Heterotopias’ for the open-access journal Humanities. She also specialises in the inter-disciplinary fields of trauma literature and theory, gender studies and sexuality, cultural memory (especially of conflict and violence), the Gothic, biofiction, and literary geographies. Mel is a member of Swansea University’s Gender in Culture and Society (GENCAS) and Conflict, Reconstruction & Memory (CRAM) Research Groups, and an Associate Member of the Spanish ORION Project: Orientation: Towards a Dynamic Understanding of Contemporary Fiction and Culture (1990s-2000s), led by Prof Rosario Arias of the University of Malaga. Mel particularly welcomes PhD proposals on neo-Victorian topics but is also happy to supervise theses on other subjects related to her areas of expertise.

Mel’s research interests are closely aligned with her teaching, which encompasses a module on Place, Memory and Identity in Film and Literature on the Foundation Year, the first year Monsters, Theories, Transformations course, and, for final year students, the optional Reading/Writing Trauma seminar, which covers diverse works from Holocaust literature to Palestinian writing and postcolonial texts. At MA level, she offers the popular Neo-Victorian Mutinies seminar, which explores literary and filmic confrontations with the darker aspects of nineteenth-century Western imperialism, the period’s racial and gender politics both at home and abroad, and their present-day legacies. Mel also convenes the Writing for Academic Publication Workshop for research postgraduates in the Arts and Humanities, which assists students in getting an article published alongside their thesis research.

Areas Of Expertise

  • Neo-Victorian Studies
  • Trauma Literature & Theory
  • Gender & Sexuality
  • Cultural Memory
  • The Gothic
  • Biofiction
  • Literary Geographies