Research group: Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies

About our research

We promote the study of the Gothic to as many different groups as possible.

We work with communities as diverse as secondary school pupils, undergraduate students, postdoctoral researchers and members of the public.

Our research-driven events include creative writing workshops, Sixth Form Gothic Study Days and short Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses.

We also host the annual Gothic Manchester Festival, Gothic networking days and public research lectures and seminars. These are often run in collaboration with our extensive network of external partners and stakeholders across Greater Manchester.

Such events help us to showcase our research, and to reveal its relevance to contemporary cultural life beyond the University.

As internationally recognised experts within the broad field of Gothic Studies, our researchers are committed to research-led teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

The Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies is particularly proud to host MA English Studies (The Gothic), one of the only taught MA programmes in the field of Gothic Studies worldwide.

Our researchers are also experienced supervisors of postgraduate and postdoctoral research, and are always keen to discuss ideas with prospective students. Details of our specialist research interests may be found on our staff profiles.

We will advertise funded PhD or masters opportunities and scholarships on our study page when they become available.

Our research themes

The history of Gothic fiction, poetry and drama

One of our research strengths is in English literature, especially the history of the Gothic literary aesthetic from the early modern period, through the eighteenth century to the present day.

Our researchers have published on topics that range from the role of architecture in eighteenth-century Gothic writing to Victorian ghost stories written by women, as well as the political and economic functions of Gothic cultural production in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Gothic screens and sounds

We also specialise in horror film. Our researchers have contributed to major critical debates in the field of horror studies, and have discussed the Gothic on screen in publications and in public engagement work with film festivals and other cultural organisations.

Our researchers have also explored the significance of sound and soundscapes to the Gothic mode, and have advanced critical and popular conceptualisations of haunted space.

Death studies

Our researchers have worked on the social context of death and disposal, in partnership with the Encountering Corpses research group and The Association for the Study of Death and Society.

We are interested in ethnographic approaches to burial and disposal, radical approaches to death studies and memorialisation in Gothic texts and Manchester cemeteries.

Decolonising the Gothic

Working with colleagues in the Centre for Migration and Postcolonial Studies, we are interested in exploring the crossover between the Gothic, race and postcolonialism.

In June 2019, we hosted Absent Presences: Shifting the Core and Peripheries of the Gothic Mode, a conference that highlighted marginalised voices and figures in the field.

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 Met from Tuesday 6 to 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. Each day is themed around a different aspect of the Gothic:

• Day one: Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Gothic

• Day two: Twentieth-century Gothic

• Day three: Post-millennial Gothic

• Day four: 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 from the University of Windsor, Ontario.