Kieran Brown
Research:
I work primarily on literature and economics (in the so-called 'Economic Humanities'). As a Rhodes Scholar (South Africa at-Large & Hertford, 2019), I received my DPhil (PhD) in English from Hertford College, Oxford, in November 2024. I am currently working on turning my dissertation on Walter Benjamin's economic writings into a book. I received my Masters degree in English (1900-present) from the University of Oxford, having written a dissertation on Samuel Beckett's Trilogy and economy. For my DPhil, I received funding from the Rhodes Scholarship, Skye Foundation Scholarship and Scatcherd European Scholarship. During this time I was also a visiting research at the Humboldt University of Berlin (2023) and the University of Cape Town (2024). I have a forthcoming edited collection with Palgrave Macmillan due to be published at the end of the year, entitled Inflationary Modernities: Literature, Culture and Economy after 1789, and have published widely in peer reviewed journals on modernism, economy and critical theory.
You can find out more by visiting my website: https://kieransilbertbrown.netlify.app/
Research Interests:
Modernism; Economics; Literary Theory; Theory of the Novel; Philosophy of Language; South African Fiction
Teaching: I have held several lectureships at different colleges, teaching Victorian literature, twentieth-century literature and literary theory to undergraduates. I have also taught several third year exchange students and have supervised numerous dissertations. I am taking up a college lectureship at Somerville in September 2025.
Selected Publications:
"Faux Apparitions: Angels or Cannibals, between Coetzee and Defoe" Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, doi:10.1080/00111619.2024.2338829
"Cosmic Society: On Language and Economy in Walter Benjamin," Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities (forthcoming)
Inflationary Modernities: Literature, Culture and Economy after 1789, edited and introduced by Kieran Brown and Wayne Stables, Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming [2025]
