Victorian Fictions of Risk - a PhD project using study of Victorian fiction to investigate changing attitudes to risk and issues around the public understanding of its underlying science.

Project Summary - This PhD project uses a study of Victorian fiction to investigate changing attitudes to risk and issues around the public understanding of its underlying science. The research seeks to answer a number of questions concerning the representation of risk and uncertainty within the literature of this period. These questions include:
• What was the nature of the risks that were dramatized in Victorian fiction and how did that reflect and shape the wider societal views of risk and uncertainty?
• How did the development of realist and genre fiction respond to new scientific and statistical methods of understanding and calculating those risks that were emerging from scientific and technological developments in the period?
• How did novels, with their distinctive approaches to weighing up individual choices against social norms, reflect changes in how readers and writers imagined the nature of the hazards that faced society and the likelihood of harm?
• How far did the highly complex structure of the novel lend itself to understanding and representing complexity in the causal factors that led to damaging events?
• How did anxieties about reading and readerships project risk into the work of fiction?
Victorian literature provides a rich and varied field in which to explore issues around the public understanding of scientific and technological change and the ways in which risk was framed in that process.

Project Team:
The supervisors will be Professor Alice Jenkins (English Literature) and Professor Denis Fischbacher-Smith (Adam Smith Business School). Alice Jenkins is a specialist in Victorian literature and science studies; she is the co-founder of the British Society for Literature and Science and co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine book series. Her current work focuses on analogy in literature and science; Victorian literature and mathematics; and Victorian fantasy. Denis Fischbacher-Smith’s work centres on risk and crisis management, counter-terrorism policy and the role of resilience planning for socio-technical and natural hazards. He has worked with UK and overseas governments and agencies on planning for and dealing with violence, catastrophic failures and disasters. He was the Editor in Chief of the journal Risk Management from 2006-2017.

Applicants should demonstrate the following:
Academic qualifications: Excellent first degree and Master’s degree in a relevant subject.
Experience: Experience in research, teaching, or public engagement activity in a relevant discipline would be desirable.
Skills/Attributes: Essential: excellent academic writing skills; evidence of substantial interest in Victorian literature. Desirable: evidence of interest in management or government policy; skills in digital humanities research methods.

In the first instance, applicants should contact Professor Alice Jenkins ([Email Address Removed]) to discuss the project and eligibility. Once eligibility is confirmed, the deadline for formal applications is: 12noon, Friday 12 January 2018.

Please submit applications to: [Email Address Removed] and state the name of the project in the subject of the email.

The following documentation will be required from applicants if they are invited to submit a full application:
• Application form
• 2 references in support of your application.
• Degree transcripts in English (Undergraduate and Masters, if relevant)
• CV
• Candidates whose first language is not English must show evidence of appropriate competence in English in the form of an IELTS certificate or similar.