If you are interested in undertaking PhD study and would like to work in any of the areas covered by the OGOM Project, you can contact Dr Sam George on email at s.george [@] herts.ac.uk for a preliminary discussion. You can also send Sam a draft research proposal of no more than 3,000 words and she will respond with guidance and feedback. Sam is Associate Professor of Research at the University of Hertfordshire and she is the Convener of the Open Graves, Open Minds Project.
Sam is interested in seeing proposals from any aspect of Gothic literature and culture, particularly shapeshifters (dark fairies, werewolves, etc.) and vampires and magical creatures (mermaids, selkies, the fae, etc.); she is particularly open to Gothic theses which intersect with fairy tale or folklore and the fantastic. She welcomes proposals from writers (particularly those who work within the area of YA fiction and the Gothic). There is scope for students to be co-supervised by Sam (Gothic/Literature) and staff from Folklore Studies or History such as Professor Owen Davies (witchcraft, magic and folklore) and Dr Ceri Houlbrook. Owen is the President of The Folklore Society and is also based at the University of Hertfordshire and Ceri is the Programme Leader for the MA in Folklore. For guidance on how your proposal should be structured, including subheadings, please see writing a research proposal.
OGOM has a number of PhD completions and has bursaries to support outstanding students from the University of Hertfordshire. The project recently celebrated a PhD completion from Daisy Butcher. Daisy has been researching female mummies and killer plants in nineteenth-century literature. The title of her project is: ‘Monsters of (In)fertility: The Plant-Woman and the Female Mummy in Victorian Gothic Literature’. Dr Sam George is Daisy’s primary supervisor. Daisy is partly funded by the OGOM Project and the Literature Department at the University of Hertfordshire. She published her first edited collection, Evil Roots: Killer tales of the Botanical Gothic with the British Library whilst still a doctoral student at the university.
Funded PhD students attached to the Project have included Dr Matt Beresford (again supervised by Sam). Matt successfully defended his thesis, ‘The Lord Byron / John Polidori Relationship and the Development of the Early Nineteenth-Century Literary Vampire’ in November 2019 and is teaching at the University of Nottingham. Matt is the author of From Demons to Dracula: The Creation of the Modern Vampire Myth and The White Devil: The Werewolf in European Culture
Dr Kaja Franck was also funded by the OGOM Project via a full-time bursary. She too was supervised by Sam and gained her doctorate in September 2017. Her thesis, ‘The Development of the Literary Werewolf: Language, Subjectivity and Animal/ Human Boundaries’ inspired the magnificent Company of Wolves Conference in 2015. Kaja is now a Lecturer in Literature at the University of Hertfordshire and has recently contributed to OGOM’s In the Company of Wolves book and the University of Wales Press’s Werewolves, Wolves and The Gothic.
Sam also co-supervised a UH-funded project from Dr Jillian Wingfield, ‘Monsters, Dreams, and Discords: Vampire Fiction in Twenty-First Century American Culture’. Jillian was awarded her doctorate in January 2019. Jillian presented a paper at OGOM’s Polidori Symposium in 2019 and is contributing a chapter to the next OGOM book The Legacy of John Polidori, the Byronic Vampire, and its Progeny (MUP, 2023), edited by Sam George and Bill Hughes.
In 2021 Sam gained two new PhD students whose work overlaps with the project: Shabnam Ahsan is working on ‘From Coloniality to Postcoloniality in British Fairy Tales 1880-Present’. Shabnam has a BAME studentship from the University of Hertfordshire, Sam is her primary supervisor and Victorian scholar Dr Andrew Maunder is her secondary supervisor.
Tatiyana Bastet is co-supervised by Sam, Prof Owen Davies, and the folklorist Dr Ceri Houlbrook. The title of her thesis is ‘The Practice of Dolls as Conjured from Shadow: Materiality at the Intersection of Myth, Memory, and Magic’.
This year Jane Gill has joined the OGOM crew supported by a bursary from the English Department at the University of Hertfordshire. Jane is working on a thesis entitled ‘Ecophobia and the Monstrous Feminine in the Gothic Literature and Visual Art of the Long Nineteenth-Century’. Jane is supervised by Dr Sam George (Primary Supervisor) and Dr Justin Sausman.
Harley Tillotson is another of our new bursary students. Harley is working on ‘Ecology in YA Fairy Fiction: Eco-Gothic Approaches to Contemporary Environmental Issues’. They are supervised by Dr Kaja Franck (Primary Supervisor) and Dr Sam George. Kaja was one of the first students supported by OGOM to graduate with a doctorate.
You can find biographies of our current students on our OGOM People page here
