Dr Paul Stephens is an AHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow (Humanities Division) and a Junior Dean at Lincoln College, Oxford. His research explores the connections between literature and finance during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His DPhil thesis, support by an AHRC-Sloane Robinson Foundation Studentship, examined the poetry and prose of Percy Bysshe Shelley through the lens of economic philosophy. He is preparing his first monograph - provisionally entitled Shelley and the Economic Imagination - which connects the poet's economic ideas (on equality, value, growth, and debt) with his theory of the creative imagination. He also serves as a research assistant to Prof. Pamela Clemit on the Letters of William Godwin for Oxford University Press (6 vols. in progress, 2011-).
Recent Publications:
Stephens, P., 'Queen Mab and the Origins of Economic Value', Romanticism. Forthcoming.
Stephens, P., 'Review: The Poet's Guide to Economics', The Charles Lamb Bulletin. Forthcoming.
Stephens, P., 'Shelley and Economics', Percy Shelley in Context, ed. Ross Wilson (CUP). Forthcoming.
Stephens, P., 'Review: Keats and Shelley: Winds of Light’, Romanticism. Forthcoming.
Stephens, P., 'Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ethics of Debt', The Review of English Studies, 71:298 (2020), 117-39.
Stephens, P., 'Review: Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet and Revolutionary', The Keats-Shelley Review, 33:1 (2019), 134-36.
Stephens, P., 'Coleridge and the National Debt', European Journal of English Studies, 21:1 (2017), 26-42.
Recent Teaching:
Autonomously devised and delivered the following undergraduate courses (composed of classes and/or tutorials):
- 'Thomas Hardy: His Life and Work'. Department for Continuing Education, Oxford (Forthcoming)
- 'British Romanticism and the Natural World'. Department for Continuing Education, Oxford (Forthcoming)
- 'Identity in Victorian Shorter Fiction'. Department for Continuing Education, Oxford (Trinity 2023)
- 'FHS I, Paper 5 (Literature in English 1760-1830)'. Lincoln College, Oxford (Co-Tutored, Trinity 2022)
- 'FHS I, Paper 5 (Literature in English 1760-1830)'. Oriel College, Oxford (Trinity 2020)
- 'John Keats: His Life and Thought'. Department for Continuing Education, Oxford (Trinity 2020)
- 'British Romanticism'. Department for Continuing Education, Oxford (Hilary 2020)
- 'Introduction to British Romanticism'. Advanced Studies in England, Bath (Michaelmas 2018)
Fellowships:
- AHRC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, University of Oxford (2023)
- Huntington Library, California. Visiting Fellowship (2020)
Other Current Roles (Selected):
- Junior Dean: Lincoln College, Oxford
- Trustee and Treasurer: The Charles Lamb Society
- Trustee and Treasurer: British Society for Eighteenth Century Studies