Alessio Anton

I am a computer scientist working at the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University. My main interest is about how philosophy can inform the design of new digital systems and, specifically, communication technology.

My research focuses on how reconcile the study of reading within different disciplines, what we can learn from looking at the different way it has been approach and how intelligent systems are changing reading. I am part of the OU_DH network and part of the communities of the ACM Hypertext and SHARP conferences.

My supervisors are Dr Francesca Benatti and Prof Derek Matravers.

Adam Baldwin

I studied for both my BA and MA at The Open University. My primary interest is in the novels of pioneering science fiction author George Griffith (1857 - 1906).

My part-time PhD looks at how Griffith's novels were instrumental in the creation of the scientific romance, the foundational genre for science fiction today. I examine how Griffith's novels reflected, commented on, and proposed often radical solutions to the issues of their day. The issues tackled include democracy, the future of the British Empire, the role of women, and how science and technology could affect how we live and how we wage war.

I have published in the British science fiction journal Foundation (July 2023), and engaged with the OU's public lecture scheme.

My supervisors are Prof. David Johnson, Dr. Edmund King, and Dr. Andrew Griffiths.

Patricia Ferguson

My first degree is from the University of Aberdeen and my MA from the University of London. My primary interest is in book history, especially the history of reading.

My part-time PhD examines the reading experiences of C.S. Lewis and his brother Warren, concentrating on the brothers’ reading in their childhood and youth. C. S. Lewis famously noted that ‘two different strains’ had gone into his making. I show how the working-class ethos of their father’s family, the Lewises, and the upper-class ethos of their mother’s family, the Hamiltons—both firmly embedded in the Protestant Ascendancy of Northern Ireland—came together to shape the reading brains of their sons. I argue that the brothers’ own imaginative works derive from their earliest reading experiences, indicating that it is not simply writing that is a creative act but reading itself.

My supervisors are Dr. Shafquat Towheed and Prof. Richard Danson Brown.

Grace Kempster

My full-time PhD explores the representation of cloth and stitch in the mid-Victorian novel (1845-75). I am examining 6 key texts by Thackeray, Dickens, Oliphant, Yonge , Eliot and Trollope to explore the tropes and consider a new paradigm of textile fluency affecting the novel.

I completed an MA in English on The Comic Spirit of George Eliot with The Open University in 2021 and completed an Mlib (Management of Library and Information Services) by distance learning with the University College Wales early in my libraries career, for which I was honoured.

My supervisors are Prof. Delia Da Sousa Correa and Prof. Nicola Watson.

Karen Paine

I have completed a BA (Hons) in English Literature, an MA in English, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Humanities with the Open University. My MA thesis looked at reading and power in The Woman in White, No Name and The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. I have also studied Victorian Studies at Birkbeck College, and Library and Information Studies at UCL.

My part-time PhD focuses on reading and Sensation novels of the 1860s. The representation of reading in Sensation novels is central to my research, and in particular the representation of reading in the novels The Woman in White and Armadale by Wilkie Collins, The Doctor’s Wife and Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and East Lynne and St Martin’s Eve by Ellen Wood. I also consider contemporary mid-Victorian responses to Sensation novels and attitudes to reading.

My supervisors are Dr. Encarna Trinidad-Barrantes and Dr. Shafquat Towheed.

Antonia Saunders

I studied for both my BA and MA at The Open University. My primary interest is in the novel in all its forms with a particular concentration on the nineteenth and early-twentieth century.

My part-time PhD looks at the construction of a Jewish Identity in histories and novels of the nineteenth century, and considers the literary and historiographical contexts of representations of Jewish people and Jewish Identity. I am a co-convenor of the GOTH (Gender and Otherness in the Humanities) Postgraduate Forum, and I’ve chaired discussions on the trope of the ‘Madwoman in the Attic’, gender fluidity in the arts and humanities, the non-human as other, and most recently, feminist readings of fairytales.

My supervisors are Prof. Delia Da Sousa Correa and Prof. Suman Gupta.

Anita Schwartz

I studied late nineteenth-century English Literature at undergraduate level, and completed my MA in Literature with The Open University. I was awarded a distinction for my dissertation on representations of Indian women in early twentieth-century fiction, and I am now a part-time PhD student in the English Department.

Inspired by a little-known collection of essays, Our Cause: A Symposium by Indian Women (1938), my thesis focuses on texts in English written by Indian women between 1870 and 1947. Their letters, diaries, articles and novels offer an important insight into how they both shaped, and were themselves shaped by, the complex debates taking place around reform, education, nationalism, and women's position in colonial Indian society.

As well as working on my PhD project, I am a specialist teacher, supporting children who have experienced significant trauma in their young lives.

My supervisors are Prof. Alex Tickell and Prof. Suman Gupta.

Melanie Taylor

I studied for an undergraduate degree in Combined Arts (English, History and Politics) at Leicester Polytechnic in the 1980s. I returned to studying after I retired in 2019, and completed an MA in English with the Open University in 2022.

My main interest is interwar women’s literature, and I’ve now embarked on a part-time PhD examining the work of Dorothy Whipple (1893-1966). I am looking in particular at responses to the domestic within her novels.

My supervisors are Dr. Jennifer Shepherd, Dr. Debbie Parker-Kinch and Prof. Sara Haslam.

Michael Terry

My research examines the representation of First World War aerial combat in literature. My work in this under-researched area aims to examine why such literature, often glamorous and heroic, confounds our general idea of what First World War representations look like. My work consists of close analysis of literature combined with detailed archival study of accounts by and about First World War airmen.

My PhD follows on from a BA (1st class) in Language and Literature (2014) and an MA (Distinction) in Literature (2017), both from the Open University. My work is cross-disciplinary with history. I regularly create lectures and articles, including for the RAF Museum, the British Commission for Military History and the Great War Aviation Society. I was the recipient of the RAF Museum’s 2023 Academic Award for the most promising PhD thesis in air power studies.

My supervisors are Prof. Sara Haslam and Dr. Edmund King.

Anne Wetherilt

I am a part-time PhD student in the Department of English, funded by the Open Oxford Cambridge (OOC) Doctoral Training Partnership. Previously, I completed a Masters in English, also with the Open University. I also hold a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and have worked for many years in public policy. I have published in the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

My thesis – ‘Decolonisation and the Female Middlebrow: Politics, Economics and the Novel’ – studies the work of women writers, who witnessed the end of British rule in India, Malaya and East Africa. My main objective is to examine how women writers used narrative features of the middlebrow novel to engage metropolitan readers in a debate on the politics and economics of decolonisation.

I am currently planning further research on the relationship between development economics and the postcolonial novel.

My supervisors are Prof. Alex Tickell and Prof. David Johnson.