Dr Alison Searle

Dr Alison Searle

Profile

I joined the University of Leeds as a University Academic Fellow in Textual Studies and Digital Editing in September 2016. I was promoted to Associate Professor of Textual Studies in 2020. Prior to coming to Leeds, I was an ARC DECRA postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney (2012–2016), an AHRC Research Associate on the Complete Works of James Shirley at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge (2008–2012), and a Leverhulme Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London (2006).

Research interests

  • pastoral care
  • religious nonconformity and dissent
  • Renaissance drama
  • seventeenth-century epistolary culture
  • transatlantic puritan literary traditions
  • theories of the imagination
  • literature and theology 

Postgraduate supervision

I am happy to supervise postgraduate students in the following areas:

  • early modern literature
  • literature and religion
  • textual studies and editing
  • digital humanities
  • epistolary culture and theory 

Publications 

Books

Editions

Online Exhibitions

Dataset

Radio Programmes

School Resource

‘How Texts From the Past Can Shape and Inform the Future’ (2021). Alison Searle was recently featured in a magazine and online article discussing her work and offering guidance to young people interested in textual studies. This article was produced by Futurum, a magazine and online platform aimed at inspiring young people to follow a career in social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE). The article includes a link to an activity sheet for students and teachers.

Chapters in Scholarly Collections

  • ‘Performing Pastoral Care through Letters’, eds, Johanna Harris and Alison Searle, The Puritan Literary Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).
  • ‘Compassion, Contingency and Conversion in James Shirley’s The Sisters’, eds, Kristine Steenbergh and Katherine Ibbett, Compassion in Early Modern Literature and Culture: Feeling and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
  • ‘Bunyan and the Word’, ed., Michael Davies, A Handbook of Bunyan Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 
  • Exiles at Home’, eds, Andrew Hiscock and Helen Wilcox, The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Literature and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 
  • 'Performing Religious Nonconformity: Conversion, Debate and the Republic of Letters', eds, A. R. Cross, P. J. Morden & I. M. Randall, Pathways and Patterns in History (London: The Baptist Historical Society, 2015).
  • Ben Jonson and Religion’, ed., Eugene Giddens, A Handbook of Jonson Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 
  • Women, Marriage and Agency in Restoration Dissent’, eds, Sarah Apetrei and Hannah Smith, Religion and Women in Britain, c. 1660–1760 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014). 
  • Conversion, Incarnation, Performance: Theology and the Future of Imagination’, eds, David Starling and Trevor Cairney, Theology and the Future (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 
  • ‘Writing Authority in the Interregnum: The Pastoral Letters of Richard Baxter’, eds, Anne Dunan- Page and Clotilde Prunier, Debating the Faith: Religion and Letter-Writing in Great Britain, 1550–1800 (Springer: International Archives of the History of Ideas, 2013).
  • ‘Conversion in James Shirley’s St Patrick for Ireland’, eds, Lieke Stelling, Harald Hendrix and Todd Richardson, The Turn of the Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature (Intersections: Yearbook for Early Modern Studies, Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2012).
  • ‘Narrative, Metaphor and Myth in C. S. Lewis’s testimonial novel Till We Have Faces’ in Oral and Written Narratives and Cultural Identities: Interdisciplinary Approaches, eds, F. C. Fagundes and M. F. Blayer (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).
  • ‘Tolkien and Time: The Fantastic Art of Consolation, Endurance, Escape’, eds, Jan Lloyd et al., Art and Time (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007).

Articles in Peer-Reviewed Journals

<h4>Research projects</h4> <p>Any research projects I'm currently working on will be listed below. Our list of all <a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/dir/research-projects">research projects</a> allows you to view and search the full list of projects in the faculty.</p>

Qualifications

  • BA (Honours) in English Literature
  • PhD in English Literature
  • PGCE in Higher Education

Professional memberships

  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Research groups and institutes

  • Textual Histories Research Group
  • Centre for the Comparative History of Print

Current postgraduate researchers

<h4>Postgraduate research opportunities</h4> <p>We welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study. Our <a href="https://phd.leeds.ac.uk">research opportunities</a> allow you to search for projects and scholarships.</p>