Public Engagement · Manchester Metropolitan University

Gothic Studies

Since its launch in 2013, the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies has been involved in a number of events, often in collaboration with other institutions, public bodies and organisations. You can find out information about them below, as well as links to other pages with more information.

Public Engagement in 2013

The Dark Heart of Film Following Dr Linnie Blake's successful proposal to found of a Centre for Gothic Studies that would reach first into the local community, in the form of public engagement activities, whilst building MMU’s profile as the country’s foremost institution in this field, the Gothic Centre was launched in 2013 alongside the first Gothic Manchester festival. The festival, co-organised by Dr Blake and Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes, was part of the British Film Institute’s Gothic: The Dark Heart of Film season, which ran from October 2013 to February 2014. Blake and Aldana Reyes introduced, and co-curated with Cornerhouse (now HOME), two public screenings of the restored version of Terence Fisher’s Dracula and of the classic occult film Night of the Demon, as part of a nationwide Gothic film festival.

October saw the launch of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies, which took place in Manchester Town Hall and was supported by the Lord Mayor's Fund. To celebrate the occasion, we hosted the first Gothic Manchester festival, a range of events and activities from the dark side designed to showcase Manchester’s Gothic dimensions. The festival was part of the IHSSR’s wider research programme Humanities in Public, directed by Helen Darby, and was also supported by it. The festival was so successful that it has become an annual event in the city’s cultural calendar.

Other public engagement events in 2013 included:

In June, Dr Aldana Reyes ran a season entitled European Gothic for the Manchester Met-based TRAUMA film group. These series of public screenings were accompanied by introductions to the films.
In July, Dr Ní Fhlainn was invited to contribute in a YouTube Zombie ‘Live Feed’ ‘Spreading the Virus’ for Queensland University of Technology Creative Industries Panel at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane (19 July 2013).
In October, the Humanities in Public programme was kickstarted with a strand on the Contemporary Gothic convened by Dr Aldana Reyes. It included a series of very popular public lectures by distinguished academics in the field of Gothic Studies: Prof Fred Botting, Prof Isabella van Elferen, Dr Catherine Spooner, Dr Stacey Abbott and our own Dr Linnie Blake.
In November, Dr Aldana Reyes was invited to give a public talk on ‘Mad Science and Surgical Horror’ for the BFI’s Gothic public lecture series.
In November, Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn gave a short talk to introduce a special vampire double bill - Nosferatu (1922), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and a new short film, The Gloaming (2013) - as part of the Grimm Up North Film Festival in association with the British Film Institute's Gothic season at The Dance House, Manchester.
Also in November we ran our first Gothic Studies Open Day for A-Level students, which involved workshops and talks by our various members of staff.

Public Engagement in 2014

Introduction to Gothic Cinema Following the phenomenal success of the Gothic Manchester Festival 2013, we returned with a new programme of events and activities designed to showcase MMU’s academic expertise in the gothic and foreground Manchester’s rich vein of gothic talent. Included in Gothic Manchester Festival 2014 were readings from authors working on the gothic dimensions of austerity politics and author Rosie Garland discussing her alternative life as Goth icon Rosie Lugosi. We also had a vampire-themed pub quiz, a phantasmagoric lantern display and film screening, and the local Steampunk community joined us for a day of retro-tech delights, including a costumed tour of the Museum of Science and Industry’s Steam Hall. The annual symposium, on the topic of the Gothic north, was organised by Dr Linnie Blake.

Other public engagement events in 2014 included:

In January, Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn was invited to give a special introduction to The Lost Boys (1987) as part of Grimm Up North Horror Classics Series in association with the BFI Gothic Season strand, Love is a Devil. The Dance House, Manchester, UK.
From October to November, Dr Blake and Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes, designed and ran a sold-out public Introduction to Gothic Cinema course in collaboration with HOME, the former Cornerhouse. This 8-week course included two major screenings of the films Rebecca and Elephant Man. The course was very positively received by attendees.
In June 2014, Dr Blake, Dr Aldana Reyes and Prof Jo Verran ran the pre-conference workshop 'The Pedagogic Use of Zombies in the Humanities and Science' for the HEA’s third annual Arts and Humanities conference, Heroes and Monsters: Extraordinary Tales of Learning and Teaching in the Arts and Humanities. The three-hour interdisciplinary and interactive workshop brought together teachers and researchers in English, Film, Microbiology and Computer Science.
In November we ran our second Gothic Studies Open Day for A-Level students, which involved workshops and talks by various members of staff.

Public Engagement in 2015

The Gothic Manchester Festival was once again reincarnated in October 2015. The festival included the one-day symposium What Lies Beneath, organised by Dr Linnie Blake. This year the Centre turned to the Lovecraftian Gothic with an eclectic collection of entertaining, thought-provoking and occasionally downright disturbing events that shed light on the ‘weirdest’ side of Manchester.

Darkness and Light- Exploring Gothic Other public engagement events in 2015 included:

On 2 April, Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn and Rachid M'rabty were invited by Grimm Up North, in association with Library Live and Manchester Central Library, to introduce a special screening of American Psycho (2000).
On 21 May, Dr Blake, Dr Ní Fhlainn and Dr Aldana Reyes were invited to participate in a discussion entitled Exploring the Influence of Gothic Horror on Contemporary Culture that followed the performance of Gothic play Cuddles. Cuddles played at the Royal Exchange (19-23 May) and would go on to play in New York. The session was chaired by director Rebecca Atkinson-Lord and playwright Joseph Wilde.
Also in May, Dr Angelica Michelis gave a workshop and lecture on the Gothic for Sixth form students at Xaverian College, Manchester.
In November we ran our third Gothic Studies Open Day for A-Level students, which involved workshops and talks by various members of staff.

Public Engagement in 2016

‌The fourth Gothic Manchester festival in October welcomed Manchester Met alumnus Andrew Michael Hurley to speak about his award-winning debut novel The Loney. Our annual symposium explored all aspects of The Gothic North, including the ancient north and being and becoming northern, and we ended the day with a screening of Ben Wheatley’s dark comedy Sightseers. We had two different ghostly walking tours of Manchester to look forward to before the festival closed with our annual Gothic Manchester pub quiz, which focused on the topic of Horrible and Ghostly (mostly) Manchester Histories.

Other public engagement events in 2016 included:

In January, Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn contributed exhibition notes and advised on film stills for the Portico Library's exhibition Sublime Ambition: The Gothic in Literature and Art (6 Jan–6 Feb).
In April, Dr Ní Fhlainn introduced a horror-double bill for UK Horror Scene in conjunction with AMC Cinemas on Scream (1996) and Fright Night (1985).
In May, Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes introduced, in collaboration with Jo Verran, professor in Microbiology, the film [REC]2 for the Wellcome Trust-funded Playing God public screening series organised by the Science Entertainment Lab at the University of Manchester.
Also in May, Dr Angelica Michelis gave a workshop and lecture on the Gothic for Sixth form students at Xaverian College, Manchester.
In June, Dr Aldana Reyes gave an invited talk at the Teaching the Gothic and Supernatural for A Level course organised by the English and Media Centre, covering current debates and developments in Gothic Studies.
In July, Dr Ní Fhlainn in partnership with the Manchester Children’s Book Festival presented a signing and Q&A event with Gothic YA authors Danny Weston and Sally Green at Waterstones, Deansgate.
In October, Dr Aldana Reyes and Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn were invited guests at the Horror Expo Ireland festival in Dublin, where they participated on specialist panels on horror fiction and film.
In November we ran our fourth Gothic Studies Open Day for A-Level students, which involved workshops and talks by various members of staff.

Public Engagement in 2017

‌In October, the fifth edition of the Gothic Manchester Festival saw us collaborating with the Manchester Fashion Insitute, Halloween in the City, Manchester Bid and Design Manchester, among others. The festival offered everything from body-beautiful horror in the film The Neon Demon, introduced by Dr Jennifer Richards, to real North West street style in a catwalk devoted to extraordinary goths and steampunks. As usual, our thrilling series of events centred on a one-day conference of accessible papers delivered by an egalitarian mix of students, seasoned academics, experts and enthusiasts.

Other public engagement events in 2017 included:

In March, Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn conducted a public post-screening discussion following a special screening of Rosemary's Baby (1968) at HOME, Manchester, as part of their 'Sunday Classics' season.
In May, Dr Ní Fhlainn gave an invited public lecture on 'Frankenstein on Film' at the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, as part of The Age of Frankenstein project with Edinburgh Napier University. Click here to listen to a podcast of the lecture.
In June, Dr Emma Liggins gave a public lecture on 'Elizabeth Gaskell's Ghost Stories and the Figure of the Outsider' at the Elizabeth Gaskell House, Plymouth Grove, Manchester.
In September, Dr Ní Fhlainn was an invited speaker on two public panels (Stephen King's America, and King's Queens) at the BFI's Stephen King Summit, as part of the BFI's Stephen King Season.
In October, Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley gave an invited talk at Texture for their special Halloween screening of Polanski's Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
In October, Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes gave an invited public talk, 'Visualising Monstrosity in Early Gothic Cinema', at the Monsters Film Festival organised by Reading University's Health Humanities Research group.
In October, Dr Ní Fhlainn gave an invited lecture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, as part of its Gothic to Goth public course.
Also in October, Dr Ní Fhlainn gave a public talk at HOME, Manchester to celebrate the 30th anniversary screening of Hellraiser (1987), as part of the Film Fear season.
In November, Prof Dale Townshend gave an invited public lecture, 'Literature, Art and Tourism at Netley Abbey, 1700–1850' at Netley Literary Festival.
Also in November, Prof Townshend gave an invited public lecture, 'Creativity and Collaboration: The Case of The Mysterious Mother' for Horace Walpole and his Legacies: The Tercentenary Lectures at Durham University.
In December, Dr Ní Fhlainn gave a public talk at HOME, Manchester, to introduce a special screening of Edward Scissorhands (1990) as part of a trio of Tim Burton screenings.

Public Engagement in 2018

‌ An image of Speke Hall. ‌In 2018, the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies hosted and organised the 14th conference of the International Gothic Association, the largest gathering of teachers, scholars, students, artists, writers and performers interested in any aspect of gothic culture. The theme of the conference was Gothic Hybridities: Interdisciplinary, Multimodal and Transhistorical Approaches and the conference took place from the 31st of July to the 3rd of August. To capitalise on the attendance of Gothic academics the world over, Gothic Manchester VI ran parallel to the conference. You can read reviews in HAUNT Manchester for both the conference and the festival here.

‌‌2018 also saw the development of links with the National Trust. Inspired by the spooky façade, ghost stories and Gothic interiors of Speke Hall, near Liverpool, Prof. Dale Townshend, Dr Emma Liggins, Dr Ellie Byrne and Dr Peter Lindfield worked on a new exhibition, ‘Romance and Revival: The Gothic at Speke Hall’, which ran from February to July 2018. As an example of the Gothic Revival in the early nineteenth century, the architecture of Speke Hall lends itself to the supernatural; the sad history of the Watt family who lived there in the 1850s and early 1860s also has uncanny echoes of the Gothic novel. The exhibition was accompanied by a series of public lectures on the Gothic by members of the Centre: Dr Emma Liggins (March), Prof Townshend (April), Dr Peter Lindfield (May), Dr Matt Foley (June) and Dr Ellie Byrne (July).

There were also a number of other public engagement events programmed for 2018. These included:

In January, Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley gave a public lecture entitled 'Witches, Bitches, Feminist Trailblazers? The Witch in Popular Culture' for The British Library's public Magic and Enchantment Study Day.
From February to May, Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes acted as invited judge on the Tell a Tale – Gothic Fiction creative writing competition organised by Theatre Cloud and supported by Arts Council England.
In partnership with Man Met's Widening Participation team, Dr Germaine Buckley organised in-school workshops for Greater Manchester schools on Gothic and Imperialism aimed at 14-18 year olds from March to May.
On the 2nd of May, Dr Aldana Reyes gave a public talk at HOME to introduce the new restored print of James Whale's The Old Dark House (1932).
In May, Dr Emma Liggins co-hosted ‘After Death: Mourning, Belief and the Supernatural’, a public event and workshop at the John Rylands Library, Deansgate. The day brought those with an interest in spirits, the macabre and the supernatural.
On the 26th of November, Dr Liggins and Dr Germaine Buckley were invited to host a Q+A at Manchester Deansgate Waterstones on the Gothic Fiction of Laura Purcell and Stuart Turton.

Public Engagement in 2019

In 2019, the Gothic Manchester festival was themed on 'Gothic Times'. The festival spanned the whole of October with a whole range of events exploring the Gothic throughout time. You can find out more about it here.

As part of the bicentenary celebrations of John Ruskin’s birth, Dr Rachel Dickinson coordinated a Festival of Ruskin in Manchester (May 2019-Jan 2020). All the events were grounded in Ruskin’s theories of the Gothic. There were more than 30 events.

There were also a number of other public engagement events:

On the 22nd of January, Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley was invited to speak at the Children’s Literature and Science event.
On the 28th of January, Dr Germaine Buckley was invited to give a public talk in the “Re-thinking ‘witches’ of Lancaster and Beyond” series of events hosted by Lancaster University’s Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies.
On the 2nd of February, Dr Germaine Buckley was invited to be part of a panel discussion organised by HAUNT Manchester for the 2nd Annual Folk Horror Festival in Manchester.
From the 7th to the 11th of February, Dr Rachel Dickinson was a Professor Invitée at l’Université de Pau et des Pays de L’Adour, France, where she co-taught MA workshops on ‘Curating Ruskin in the Pyrenees’ with Prof Laurence Rousillon-Constanty (Pau) and Prof George Landow (Brown).
On 14th of February, Dr Peter N. Lindfield gave a public lecture at The Society of Antiquaries of London on “The Parian Chronicle Debate and Concepts of Authenticity in Antiquarian Science”.
On the 18th of February, Dr Dickinson gave an invited paper, ‘“Foul Fog”: Ruskin and Pollution’ at the ‘Ruskin’s Ecology’ workshop held at The Ruskin, Lancaster University.
On the 4th of March, Dr Germaine Buckley was invited to give an introduction to The Seventh Victim (1943) for Bigger than Life.
On the 27th of March, Dr Matt Foley participated in Following Hauntology: Twilight Streets and Dark Horizons, a panel discussion featuring academics, artists and innovators presented by HAUNT Manchester and Not Quite Light ahead of Not Quite Light Weekend 2019.
Drs Sorcha Ní Fhlainn and Xavier Aldana Reyes spoke at the ‘Some curious disquiet’: Polidori, the Byronic Vampire, and Its Progeny’ symposium to mark the bicentenary of ‘The Vampyre’on 6-7 April.
On the 13th of May, Dr Dickinson gave The Mary Frith Lecture, the Annual Lecture of the Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, Sheffield on ‘Spinning Ruskin: Crafts and Textiles’.
On the 15th of May, Dr Germaine Buckley delivered a paper for the Games and Philosophy, a public seminar for the Manchester Game Studies Network.
On the 17th of May Dr Dickinson gave an invited lecture on ‘Craft as a political ideology – two hundred years since Ruskin’ at ‘Why Craft Matters: A Symposium’ to a supplement Harwood House’s first biennale.
On the 1st of June, Dr Aldana Reyes presenting the keynote lecture at the ‘Gothic Spectacle and Spectatorship’ conference taking place at the University of Lancaster.
On the 2nd of June, Prof Dale Townshend presented a lecture entitled ‘The Peripatetic Picturesque: Domestic Tourism and Landscape, 1750–1850’ at ‘The Picturesque Garden in England’, a study weekend held by the Department of Continuing Education, University of Oxford, in association with The Gardens Trust.
On the 8th June, Dr Ní Fhlainn organised the conference ‘The Gothic 1980s: The Decade That Scared Us’.
On the 12th of June, Dr Aldana Reyes and Rachid M’Rabty are organising the symposium ‘Detecting Pessimism: Thomas Ligotti and the Weird in an Age of Post-Truth’. The day included papers from staff and students at Man Met as well as a screening run in collaboration with Pilot Light TV Festival.
From the 24th of June to the 23rd of August, Special Collections at Manchester Met held an exhibition curated by Dr Dickinson: Ruskin’s Manchester: “Devil’s Darkness” to Beacon City.
§ The conference Absent Presences: Shifting the Core and Peripheries of the Gothic Mode, organised by the PhD community at Man Met, ran from the 27th to the 29th of June.
On the 6th of September, Dr Dickinson gave a keynote lecture at ‘Goodness, Truth and Beauty in the Work of John Ruskin and his Contemporaries’ at Anglia Ruskin University.
On the 14th of September, Drs Aldana Reyes, Blake, Liggins and Ní Fhlainn ran a one-day special course on the Female Gothic with HOME.
On the 26th of October, Dr Dickinson was invited to do a live, public interview ‘Ruskin and his Contemporaries – in Conversation with Robert Hewison’ at the Off the Shelf Festival, Sheffield.
On the 3rd of November, Dr Ní Fhlainn was a panellist at the Hong Kong Literary Festival.
On the 14th of December, Dr Dickinson gave an invited lecture on Ruskin at ‘John Ruskin: Nineteenth-Century Visionary, Twenty-first Century Inspiration’ Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Public Engagement in 2020

There were a number of public engagements events:

On the 18th of December, Dr Emma Liggins and Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes participated in Casa Con convention (US) for a special panel on ghost stories for Christmas.
On the 7th of October, Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes delivered a public lecture, ‘Spanish Horror Cinema: Industry, Political Trauma and the Gothic Imaginary’, for the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies.
From October to November, Dr Matt Foley and Dr Sonja Lawrenson led ‘Melmoth’s Afterlives’, a celebration of the bicentenary of Charles Maturin’s influential gothic novel Melmoth the Wanderer that involved hosting three Melmoth-inspired book groups, a plenary talk by Dr Christina Morin (University of Limerick), and an interview with novelist Sarah Perry.
In July, Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn and Aldana Reyes were invited to become founding members of the Horror Studies SIG organised by BAFTSS (British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies).
On the 14th of March, Prof Dale Townshend presented a public lecture on the Picturesque in eighteenth-century culture to the York Georgian Society.
On the 1st of February, Dr Julian Holloway performed Rural Eerie: Exploring the Strange Countryside through Sounds and Words alongside Emily Oldfield and Andrew Michael Hurley at The Peer Hat, Manchester.
From January to April, Dr Chloé Germaine Buckley ran a book club project in Greater Manchester, funded by the Siobhan Dowd trust.
From the 14th of January to the 3rd of March, Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes delivered an 8-week course on Gothic Cinema at HOME.

Public Engagement in 2021

There were a number of public engagements events:

On the 27th of May, Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes and Dr Sorcha Ní Fhlainn participated in the Twenty-First-Century Gothic: A Retrospective public book launch.
In April, Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes delivered a keynote interview for the PopMeC (Popular Media and Culture) collective on the topic of ‘Automata, Cyber Terror and Technocratic Realities’.
Throughout the year, Aldana Reyes contributed liner notes and interviews for re-releases of horror films distributed by Arrow Video, Cauldron Films and Severin Films.

Public Engagement in 2022

The Virtual Winter Lecture Series, a number of research-led talks, will be running from November 2022 to March 2023. These papers are free, online and open to anyone with an interest in the Gothic. They reflect the important and substantial research carried out by Gothic Centre members. Speakers, dates, titles and sessions are as follows (please click on titles to book tickets):

Dale Townshend, ‘Cancelling Matthew Gregory Lewis; or, Gothic and the Question of Slavery’ (30 November 2022)
Matt Foley, ‘Monstrous and Ventriloqual Voices: Robert Bloch and the Returns of Poe’ (14 December 2022)
Matthew Carter, ‘“This house has many hearts”: The Incoherence of Poltergeist (1982)’ (18 January 2023)
Emma Liggins, ‘Women’s Ghost Stories, 1910s to 1930s: The Haunted Metropolis’ (25 January 2023)
Linnie Blake, ‘Neoliberal Irish Gothic: The Death and Afterlife of the Celtic Tiger’ (8 February 2023)
Sorcha Ní Fhlainn, ‘Living in the Upside Down: The Retro 1980s’ (22 February 2023)
Xavier Aldana Reyes, ‘Gothic Cinema: Towards a Definition’ (8 March 2023)

This year saw the Gothic Centre begin a series of collaborations with the Collective for Radical Death Studies at Albright College, in the US. The first of them, ‘Horror, Race, and the Archives: A Masterclass’, was led by medical librarian Megan Rosenbloom and ran on the 3^rd, 5^th and 7^th of October. The second, ‘Decolonising the Gothic’, was led by Dr Rebecca Duncan (Linnæus University, Sweden) on the 22^nd, 24^th and 29^th of November.

There were also a number of public engagements events involving members of the Centre:

From January to May, our PGR cohort ran a series of PGR/ECR public webinars titled ‘Gothic Approaches’. These are available to watch on YouTube.
On the 12^th of March, Dr Aldana Reyes participated in the Nosferatu at 100: The Vampire as Contagion and Monstrous Outsider public online event, organised by the Open Graves, Open Minds Project.
The AHRC-funded ‘Revenants and Remains’ project, ran by Prof Dale Townshend, hosted five public events throughout the months of October and November at Roche Abbey (1 October), Furness Abbey (8 October), Byland Abbey (5 November), Lanercot Priory (12 November) and Rievaulx Abbey (26 November).
On the 28^th and 29^th of October, The Haunted Hibernia: Conjuring the Contemporary Irish Gothic conference took place at Carlow College, St Patrick's (Ireland). The conference was organised by our own Karmel Knipprath (PGR) and featured plenaries by our Drs Linnie Blake and Sorcha Ní Fhlainn.
On the 2^nd of November, The Long Nineteenth-Century Network, ran by Dr Emma Liggins and Rachel Dickinson, ran a special Halloween seminar on 'Nineteenth-Century Narratives of Horror'. The evening featured papers from Prof Katey Castellano, Dr Emily Alder and Dr Madeline Potter.
On the 3^rd of November, Dr Blake interviewed horror scholar and director Kier-la Janisse as part of a special screening of The Haunting organised by Grimmfest and Matchbox Cine.
Monsters and Movies, a full weekend of screenings and in-depth talks with figures like Reece Shearsmith, Mick Garris, Alice Krige, Neil Marshall, Corin Hardy, Dominic Brunt, Shaune Harrison, Charlotte Colbert and Ashley Thorpe focused, took place at the Odeon Great Northern from the 19^th to the 20^th of November. The season was co-convened by our own Dr Blake in collaboration with Grimmfest and the BFI, and included Q&As led by Dr Blake, Dr Ní Fhlainn and Leonie Rowland.

Public Engagement in 2023

In 2023, The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies is running an International Gothic Summer School: an exciting series of lectures, workshops and seminars to be held at Manchester Metropolitan University from Tuesday 6–Friday 9 June 2023.

Over four intensive days, participants will explore selected aspects of the Gothic imagination, from the eighteenth century through to the present day. Day 1 is themed around Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Gothic; Day 2, Twentieth-Century Gothic; Day 3, Post-Millennial Gothic; and Day 4 around Professional Gothic Development. All events will be led by active researchers and professionals in the broad field of Gothic Studies, and supported by our visiting international speaker Professor Carol Margaret Davison (University of Windsor, Ontario).

Full programme and registration details