Institute of English areas of expertise
The defining characteristics of English research are its attention to the subtleties of meaning in creative, expository and technical writing, and its accounts of the histories of writing's creation, dissemination, and consumption.
The defining characteristics of English research at DMU are its focus on how processes of literary adaptation figure in these histories, its expertise in the creation of modern critical editions of literary and historical works that convey to modern readers these subtleties of meaning and these histories of creation, dissemination and consumption, and its creative writing. These areas of interest are captured in our international centres, the Centre for Adaptations, the Centre for Textual Studies. and the Leicester Centre for Creative Writing.
Centre for Adaptations
The international Centre for Adaptations brings together academics from Drama, English, History, Film Studies and New Media.
It hosts the journal Adaptation (Oxford University Press) and the book series Screen Adaptations (Methuen and Norton), organises workshops across universities in Europe and America, offers lectures during an annual cultural events week, and is home of the Association of Adaptation Studies which manages annual conferences (which have taken place in Leicester, Atlanta, Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Istanbul, London and Oxford).
It collaborates with Honorary Professor, Andrew Davies, who donated his rich and extensive archive to the centre in 2015.
“The new journal, Adaptation, and the new Association of Adaptation Studies is a most welcome development in an area that has been for so long under-represented in academic circles. As a practitioner, I find it rather thrilling to be the object of scholarly investigation!" - Andrew Davies, screenwriter and novelist
Contact details
Professor Deborah Cartmell, Director of the Centre for Adaptations
De Montfort University
Clephan Building 0.38
The Gateway
Leicester
LE1 9BH
T: +44 (0)116 255 1551 extension 6685
E: djc@dmu.ac.uk
W: dmu.ac.uk/adaptations
Centre for Textual Studies
The Centre for Textual Studies (CTS) is devoted to scholarly research in the fields of textual studies and history of the book, as well as the emerging technologies that support them.
These fields include bibliographies, textual criticism, scholarly editing, genetic criticism, computational stylistics, the sociology of bibliography and texts, and book history.
The CTS undertakes research that strengthens the ties among these related fields and that draws on advanced electronic technologies for investigation and presentation.
The historical range of texts in which the CTS has expertise starts with medieval manuscripts (for example poems by Geoffrey Chaucer), continues through the early printed book period (incunabula by William Caxton, the quartos and Folios of Shakespeare) into the steam press and hot-metal periods (the 18th-20th centuries) and ends with the latest digital editions.
The centre provides technical, methodological, theoretical, practical and administrative support for projects that it undertakes. It assists researchers seeking funding for such projects and supplies instruction in technical information related to the design and implementation of electronic scholarly research sites in literary and historical disciplines.
Contact details
Professor Gabriel Egan, Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Centre for Textual Studies
De Montfort University
Clephan 0.35
The Gateway
Leicester
LE1 9BH
E: gegan@dmu.ac.uk
W: http://cts.dmu.ac.uk/
Leicester Centre for Creative Writing
Leicester Centre for Creative Writing is a diverse community of writers working in a wide range of forms and genres including long and short fiction (SF, autobiographical, Crime, Literary, Experimental), performance, poetry of all kinds, script (radio, independent film, graphic novel), and digital work. The Centre is interested in all aspects of Practice Research and the potential to find creative ways to express research imperatives in Creative Writing.
The centre has three main foci:
- The promotion and exploration of Creative Writing as a field of Practice Research
- The promotion of Creative Writing as a taught discipline
- Public Engagement
We are keen for the Centre to serve writing communities in the region and beyond, and to provide opportunities for hosting events and collaborations. Our flagship is the highly successful annual collaboration with Five Leaves Press on States of Independence, an independent book festival in a day. See last year’s programme here: https://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/.
Current centre research includes crime fiction as neo-liberal critique, Afro-futurist fiction, poetry and space exploration, speculative fiction about an alternate history of Leicester, and poetry examining the roots of lyric in invective and ritual cursing.
We have an innovative taught MA programme, Creative Writing MA, that will extend your writing practice in both professional and research contexts, as well as enable you to work on a long project.
We are currently supervising Creative Writing PhDs involving:
- A collage novel exploring the music scene in the 1990s
- Multi-platform studies of the Millennial generation
- Queer experimental memoir
- Biofiction exploring the painter Turner, and his mother’s incarceration in Bedlam
If you have a PhD project, then why not get in touch?
Contact details
Professor Simon Perril, Professor of Poetic Practice
De Montfort University
Clephan 0.16
The Gateway
Leicester
LE1 9BH
E: sperril@dmu.ac.uk