Environmental Humanities Research Group

Peregrine falcon, Parkinson Building, University of Leeds. Credit: @leedsbirder

The Environmental Humanities Research Group investigates the relationships between human creativity, social life and the nonhuman world.

Based in Leeds’s School of English but working across disciplines, we collaborate with academic and non-academic partners to conduct cutting-edge scholarship on literature and culture in the context of the global environmental crisis.

Research themes, outputs and partners

Our interests range widely; prominent themes in work by group members include:

• postcolonial ecocriticism
• eighteenth-century and Romantic studies
• twentieth-century and contemporary poetry
• animal studies
• the ‘Anthropocene’

The group was formed in 2011. We have a strong record of research and publishing, public engagement, and support from funding bodies. Our major projects include the Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Programme; ENHANCE, Europe’s first doctoral training programme in the environmental humanities; and Land Lines, on British nature writing since the eighteenth century.

Our funders and partners have included (among others) the Arts and Humanities Research Council; the British Academy; the European Research Council; the Field Studies Council; Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust; Leeds Library; the Leverhulme Trust; the National Trust; Natural England; the Poetry Society; the Rachel Carson Centre; the Woodland Trust; the Wordsworth Trust; and Yorkshire and Lancashire Wildlife Trusts.

We hold a regular programme of social and scholarly events, including an annual lecture with a distinguished visiting speaker, as well as other conferences, symposia and public events arising from our research projects.

Postgraduate opportunities

Postgraduate researchers are at the heart of the group, and we warmly welcome enquiries about PhD study.

The group includes several experienced PhD supervisors, with a broad spectrum of expertise. Dr Jeremy Davies, Dr Richard De Ritter and Dr David Higgins all supervise studies on eighteenth- to nineteenth-century writing, and some contemporary topics; Dr Caitlin Stobie supervises in creative writing; and Dr Emma Trott supervises in contemporary literature. See the links below for further details. Many other colleagues in the School also supervise PhD students on a range of environmental humanities topics.

More information

To learn more, please contact the group’s acting convenor, Jeremy Davies.

People

Staff

Research students