Externally Funded Projects

The faculty has a good track record in securing external funding. In addition to a number of small grants and funded sabbatical/research leave, current major research projects include:

Identification of the Scribes Responsible for Copying Major Works of Middle English Literature, in association with the University of York
Led (within the faculty) by Dr Simon Horobin, this a 4 year AHRC funded project which seeks to combine linguistic profiles (dialetic spellings) and palaeographic evidence (likeness of handwriting) to identify the scribes responsible for copying the works of the major Middle English Poets.

Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and early medieval commentary
Led by Professor Malcolm Godden, this 5 year, Leverhulme funded project seeks to compile, edit and analyse the complete corpus of comments and glosses prior to 1100 and make it available to others in a useable and transparent form. This will form part of a wider re-examination of the study and use of the DCP in that early period.

Making Britain: Visions of Home and Abroad (1870-1950), in collaboration with Principal Investigator, Professor Susheila Nasta of the Open University.

In the Faculty, Professor Elleke Boehmer as Co-Investigator, and Dr Sumita Mukherjee as RA, are leading the research on the 1870-1918 strand supported by project consultant Dr Rozina Visram. The research is investigating early South Asian contributions to Britain’s literary, cultural and political life interrogating the common perception that a homogenous British culture only began to diversify after the Second World War.

Digital Miscellanies Index
Led by Dr Abigail Williams, this 3 year Leverhulme funded project will create a freely available online database of the contents of the 1000 poetic miscellanies published over the course of the eighteenth century.

The Faerie Queene Now: Remaking religious poetry for today's world
Led in the Faculty by Dr Simon Palfrey, this one year project is run by the Royal Holloway, University of London, and funded by the AHRC. The project investigates the spiritual possibilities of the present by rescuing a neglected poem, one of the great epics of English literature, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

The Oxford Edition of the Sermons of John Donne
Led by Dr Peter McCullough, this 5-year, AHRC funded project will involve an international team of scholars to produce an edition of the Sermons of John Donne.