Dr Vic Clarke

Profile

Previously I have held teaching and research posts in History at the universities of York, Durham, and Warwick, before returning to the School of English at Leeds in 2025 as a Research Assistant on the Curran Index, led by Dr Emily Middleton. My research on this project involves using primary source archival and digital research into the journalism career of Victorian feminist and animal rights activist Frances Power Cobbe, identifying attribution for her anonymously published writing.

I studied at Leeds for my MA in Victorian Literature and then my PhD, entitled ‘Reading and Writing the Northern Star, 1837-1847’, co-supervised by Professor Richard Salmon (School of English) and Professor Malcolm Chase (School of History), completed in 2020. My doctoral research offered the first long-term study of the leading newspaper of the Chartist movement in Britain, the Northern Star. This project combined literary and digital humanities methodology to offer new insights within this neglected area of Chartist history. My research was funded by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities DTC of the Arts & Humanities Research Council.

During my doctoral studies I worked as Research Assistant on the project Letterpress: Past, Present, and Future (2017-2018), led by Dr. James Mussell, and have taught on a variety of undergraduate modules in the School of English. My research has been published in Print, Politics, and the Provincial Press in Modern Britain (ed. Ian Cawood, 2019); as well as The Victorianist (2018) and History Workshop Online (2020). I have also contributed to public engagement work as one of the resident historians for the Kennington Chartist Project (2018); and conducted audience analysis research for the East End Women’s Museum (2020).

I then held a Leeds Arts and Humanities postdoctoral fellowship to pursue my own research, as well as working on a research project to identify offensive and problematic language in archival legacy collections, developing a workflow for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museum sector workers.

Research interests

My research is interdisciplinary, making use of research methods from across English Literature, History, and Digital Humanities. Within this, I am particularly interested in the theory of the periodical form for our understanding of literary and activist cultures of the nineteenth-century world, and the everydayness of political cultures. I am also interested in ways that stories about the past are told in in the present through exhibitions, literature, and TV and film.

Currently I am developing a long-term research project on the history of ethical fashion in Britain. This research draws upon my experience of Victorian periodical studies, paying particular attention to the representation of labour issues and exploitation within protest writing and fashion and textiles publications. My hope is that this project will highlight how the rhetoric of Victorian labour activism is mirrored today within environmental sustainability and climate-conscious fashion camapigns.

Recent publications:

• Clarke, V. “Bibliography of Urban History 2024”, Urban History (2025).
• Clarke, V. and Annemarie McAllister, ‘Introduction: Currents and Currencies in the Victorian Periodial Press’, Victorian Periodicals Review (Winter 2024).
• Clarke, V. “Working-Class Writing in Victorian Britain, 1837-1901”, The Routledge Companion to Working-Class Literature, ed. by Ben Clarke (2024).
• Clarke, V. ‘The Chartist Movement in Britain, 1830-1855’, in Mouvements protestataires, contestations politiques et luttes sociales en Grande-Bretagne (2024).
• Clarke, V. “'Fustian Jackets, Unshorn Chins, Blistered Hands': Fabric and Political Feeling in the Chartist Movement, 1837–1848”, Everyday Fashion: Interpreting British Clothing since 1600, ed. by Bethan Bide, Jade Halbert, and Liz Tregenza (2024).
• ‘What if… the Chartists had succeeded?’ All About History (Issue 130, June 2023).
• Clarke, V. ‘Time, Space, Gender, and the Chartist Periodical’, Victorian Periodicals Review (Winter 2020).
• Clarke, V. ‘Identifying the Readers & Correspondents of the Northern Star, 1847-1848′ Print, Politics, and the Provincial Press in Modern Britain, eds. Ian Cawood and Lisa Peters (2019).

Qualifications

• MA Victorian Literature, University of Leeds (2016)
• BA English Literature with English Language & Linguistics, University of Roehampton (2014)

Professional memberships

• Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (Dec. 2020)
• Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Student education

During my time at Leeds I have delivered lectures and seminars on a variety of undergraduate modules, including Reading Between the Lines, Poetry: Reading & Interpretation, Prose: Reading & Interpretation, and Victorian Literature. I have also convened British Literature and the Brontes for Leeds International Summer School, and supervised student research on the Liberal Arts research placement.

In spring 2026 I will supervise research projects on the MA Culture and Entrepreneurship in the school of Performance, Culture, and Industry. I welcome discussion from MA students interested in researching urban heritage, museum and archival design and practice, and public history.

Research groups and institutes

• Centre for the Comparative History of Print
• Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute