Dr Nicola Darwood

Senior Lecturer in English Literature

Nicola Darwood

Course Leader for BA (Hons) English and BA (Hons) English Literature

Director of the Research Institute of Media, Arts and Performance

I graduated with a PhD in English Literature in 2007, and I've been working at the 쮸떴눈첵AV since 2009, teaching across all years of undergraduate study and supervising research degrees. I teach on a range of units, introducing students to literary theory, poetry, prose and plays from the medieval period to the twenty-first century, through to more specialist units such as Modern Irish Literature. I'm the course leader for the undergraduate English provision, and really enjoy working with students as they make their transition into higher education, helping them to achieve their full potential during their time at the university.

My own field of research focuses on women writers of the twentieth century and the literature of Bedfordshire, and I've published work on Elizabeth Bowen, Stella Benson and Nancy Spain. I'm also the co-editor for a journal dedicated to the work of Elizabeth Bowen. I'm currently working on an edited collection of essays on women writers of the interwar period, and the 쮸떴눈첵AV's Literary Bedfordshire project which brings to life writers who have lived or worked in Bedfordshire.

I also enjoy working with our local secondary schools as part of the 쮸떴눈첵AV's outreach programme, helping to enthuse students and encourage engagement with literature and language.

PhD in English Literature, De Montfort 쮸떴눈첵AV (2007)
Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, 쮸떴눈첵AV (2012)
BA (Hons) in English and Cultural Studies, De Montfort 쮸떴눈첵AV (1999)

I am the course leader for BA (Hons) English, BA (Hons) English Literature, and BA (Hons) Education Studies and English.

I am the unit leader for four units (modules) across the undergraduate English courses:

Approaching Literature (year 1)
Radical Change in the Long Nineteenth Century (year 2)
The Play's the Thing (year 2)
Research in Action (year 3)

I also supervise dissertations.

My research interests lie in authorship and cultural production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, specifically the work of Elizabeth Bowen and Stella Benson. My work on Bowen has led to the co-founding and co-editorship of the peer reviewed, open access journal, the Elizabeth Bowen Review. This journal publishes work by established scholars, but also supports Early Career Researchers and PhD students to publish their work. I also co-founded, and co-chair, the Elizabeth Bowen Society, which promotes Bowen scholarship.

Research Supervision

Current students

Director of Studies �� PhD student: The Practice of Absurdity
Director of Studies of MPhil/PhD student: Representations of Trauma in Young Adult Literature
Director of Studies of PhD student: A Place Amongst the Galaxy of Roses: Gender, Sexuality and Flaneurie in the Poetry of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Director of Studies - MPhil/PhD student: Investigating the role of media and cultural competency acquisition of university students.
Second supervisor - MPhil/PhD student: Analogue/Analog Memories of Digital Transformation: oral history transmissions of student radio management participation.

Former students

Director of Studies of PhD student: Gender Subversion, Sexual Deviancy and the Other in George R. R. Martin�셲 A Song of Ice and Fire (viva passed with minor corrections January 2023)
Director of Studies of PhD student: Hockliffe Collection: Representations of Punishment in Nineteenth Century Stories for Children (viva passed with minor corrections February 2019 - degree awarded July 2019)
Director of Studies of MA (Research) student: Desire in the fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (degree awarded in March 2014)
Second supervisor of PhD student: From Monmouth to Merlin: The evolution and stasis of gender representations in the Arthurian myth (viva passed with minor corrections July 2015 - degree awarded November 2015)

I also examine research degrees, and chair vivas for both PhD and MA (Res).

I welcome applicants for PhD, MPhil , MA (Res) study or collaborative research projects in the fields of late nineteenth/early twentieth century literature, book history, literary history and the literature of Bedfordshire.

2025 (forthcoming) �쁁owen in Italy�� in Hepburn, Allan (ed) Bowen in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge 쮸떴눈첵AV Press).
2025 (forthcoming) �섃�쁔his may not reach you �╈��: letters as a location of narrative in Elizabeth Bowen�셲 fiction�� in The Elizabeth Bowen Review, volume 6.
2025 (forthcoming) �섃�쁁eing at Home in the World��. Stella Benson�셲 Goodbye, Stranger�� in Frayn, Andrew and Jones, Katie (eds) Non-Canonical British Writers: Moderns and Others (London: Bloomsbury).
2025 (forthcoming) with Oliver Belas and Eric Edwin �쁁edfordshire's first black male police officer: Memoir and collaboration as education�� in Goodwyn, Andy, Majid, Nasreen and Tsegay, Samson (eds) Race and Education: Regional Experiences of Minoritised UK Educators. (Leeds: Emerald Publishing).
2023. (with Alexis Weedon) 'In Hearing Pleasing Things Retold' in Cinderella (programme note for the Royal Ballet's production of Cinderella at the Royal Opera House) Reprinted for the 2024/2025 season.
2022. 'Sometimes I pose, but sometimes I pose as posing': Stella Benson's early fiction' in Kane, Louise (ed) Re-Reading the Age of Innovation: Victorians, Moderns, and Literary Newness, 1830��1950 (London: Routledge).
2022. ''OHO, WHAT NEXT? ��' ~ Stella Benson: editor' in Benson, Stella and Brad Bigelow (ed) Pull Devil, Pull Baker (Norwich: Boiler House Press).
2020. 'Nancy Spain's Cinderella goes to the Morgue, An Entertainment' in Darwood N and Alexis Weedon (eds). Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
2020. Edited with Alexis Weedon. Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
2020. 'Flying Dangerously: Elizabeth Bowen's To the North' in McCluskey, Michael & Luke Seaber (eds). Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan)
2020. Edited with W R Owens and Alexis Weedon. Fiction and the 'Woman Question' 1850-1930. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
2020. 'The making of a suffragette: Stella Benson and I Pose (1915)' in Darwood, Nicola, W R Owens and Alexis Weedon (eds). Fiction and the 'Woman Question' 1850-1930. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.103-122).
2020. Edited with Nick Turner. Interwar Women's Comic Fiction: 'Have Women a Sense of Humour?' (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
2020. 'Laughter and dying: Stella Benson's Hope Against Hope and Other Stories and Tobit Transplanted' in Darwood, Nicola and Turner, Nick (eds) Interwar Women's Comic Fiction: 'Have Women a Sense of Humour?' (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.63-82).
2012. A World of Lost Innocence: The fiction of Elizabeth Bowen. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publications
2010. 'Eviction from Eden: The Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen' in The Glass, No.22, Spring 2010, pp.41-49.
2009. 'Empty Boxes, Empty Spaces: Elizabeth Bowen's The Little Girls' in McNair, A and Ryder, J (eds) in Further From the Frontiers: Crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies. Aberdeen: AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, pp. 11-20.

Co-editor (with Nick Turner) The Elizabeth Bowen Review (co-edited with Nick Turner):

volume 6, June 2025.
volume 5, April 2023.
volume 4, September 2021.
volume 3, September 2020.
volume 2, September 2019.
volume 1, May 2018.

Invited talks/contributions:

'Great Grey Boxes: Elizabeth Bowen and the 'Big House' - invited address for the Swiss Centre of Irish Studies at the 쮸떴눈첵AV of Zurich, October 2024.
�쁄ncountering Elizabeth Bowen: the Farahy Address�� invited address for the annual Elizabeth Bowen commemoration service, Farahy Church, Farahy, County Cork, Ireland, September 2023.
Invited presentation: 쮸떴눈첵AV of Buckingham, �쁅rom the archive to the page: the labyrinthine nature of a research journey (featuring Cinderella, Nancy Spain, Elizabeth Bowen and Stella Benson)��, 27^th October 2021.
Podcast: Darwood, N. (30%), Royle, N., and Hepburn, A. 2021.
Radio: contribution to an episode of Radio 4�셲 Woman�셲 Hour to talk about the Cinderella myth, 26^th November 2021.

Select conference papers:

'This may not reach you ...': letters as a location of narrative in Elizabeth Bowen�셲 fiction - Locating Elizabeth Bowen, 쮸떴눈첵AV, May 2024.
�섃�쁖irtue and Vice; or, Tales from the Hockliffe Collection�� BERA conference, 쮸떴눈첵AV, June 2023.
�섃�쁀 changeling lover [�� and a] changeling son��: Stella Benson�셲 Goodbye, Stranger�� From Bront챘 to Bloomsbury Fifth International Conference: Reassessing Women's Writing of the 1920s and 1930s �� Fifth International Conference 1920s and 1930s ICVWW Conference Canterbury Christ Church 쮸떴눈첵AV, July 2018
�쁏olitics and �쐔he Woman Question�� in Mary Cholmondeley�셲 Red Pottage (1899) and Stella Benson�셲 I Pose (1915) �� Literature and the �쁗oman Question��, 쮸떴눈첵AV, June 2018
�쁔elling stories: the diaries of Stella Benson�� - Creative Practice Research Conference in the Age of the Neo-liberalism, 쮸떴눈첵AV, May 2018
��[W]hat a small gift it was��: Stella Benson and I Pose (1915) - English: Shared Futures, Newcastle July 2017
�쁄nter a murderer: Nancy Spain�셲 Cinderella goes to the Morgue�� - All about Cinderella: retellings in the cultural imagination, 쮸떴눈첵AV, June 2017
�쁍o one is incapable of boiling a kettle��: Reviewing Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes - Elizabeth Bowen: a re-evaluation, 쮸떴눈첵AV, May 2017

Co-organiser - Locating Elizabeth Bowen - 쮸떴눈첵AV, May 2024
Co-organiser - Elizabeth Bowen: Blurred Boundaries - 쮸떴눈첵AV, June 2019
Co-organiser - The Mark Rutherford Symposium: Literature and 'The Woman Question' - 쮸떴눈첵AV, June 2018.
Co-organiser - Elizabeth Bowen: a reevaluation, 쮸떴눈첵AV, May 2017
Convenor - All about Cinderella: retellings in the cultural imagination, 쮸떴눈첵AV, June 2017

Member of the Executive Committee of 쮸떴눈첵AV English (Assistant Secretary)
External examiner (2024-2028) St Mary's 쮸떴눈첵AV: BA English Literature
External examiner (2025-2029) Arab Open 쮸떴눈첵AV: MA English Literature
External examiner (2020-2025) Leeds Trinity 쮸떴눈첵AV: BA (Hons) English and Film; BA (Hons) English and Media; BA (Hons) English Literature
Co-chair of the Elizabeth Bowen Society and co-editor of The Elizabeth Bowen Review, an open access, peer reviewed journal.
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
Member of the Literature Advisory Board for Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Occasional reviewer for: Trent editions, English, Routledge and Victorian Studies.

T: +44 (0)1234 793106
E: nicola.darwood@beds.ac.uk

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School of Education and English Language
쮸떴눈첵AV
Bedford campus
Polhill Avenue
Bedford
MK41 9EA
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