Staff Profile

Background

I was an undergraduate at Exeter College Oxford and a postgraduate at Trinity Hall Cambridge. On completing my interdisciplinary PhD thesis, which focused on Mary Wollstonecraft, I took up a College Lecturership at The Queen's College Oxford in 2009. In 2011, I returned to Trinity Hall Cambridge as a Research Fellow in Modern Languages (English and French). In September 2013, I became a Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature at Newcastle University.

Qualifications

MA (Oxon); MPhil (Cantab); PhD (Cantab).

Google Scholar

I research cross-cultural exchange and women’s writing in the eighteenth century and Romantic period. I also have a secondary research interest in women’s contemporary poetry and translation in the context of postcolonial Ireland. My work is interdisciplinary, focusing on both English and French literature, and my methodology combines gender and feminist theory with theories of literary and cultural translation and cosmopolitanism. I have particular expertise in the works of Mary Wollstonecraft and other women writers and radicals of the Revolutionary era.

Current Projects

My scholarly edition of Caroline of Lichtfield, Thomas Holcroft’s translation of Isabelle de Montolieu’s best-selling novel, was published by Pickering & Chatto in 2013 and reissued as a Routledge paperback edition in 2016. My next major publication will be a monograph, The Cosmopolitanism of Mary Wollstonecraft, which is close to completion.

As a participant in the research group 'Animating Text at Newcastle University', I have a strong interest in digital editing and the potential for interdisciplinary collaboration between the Humanities and Computer Science, particularly in the field of translation.

I am also working with my colleague Jenny Mander (University of Cambridge) on an interdisciplinary project that investigates the literary and aesthetic modes deployed to express maternal sentiments in the long eighteenth century.

My undergraduate teaching in the academic year 2013/14 includes:

Semester One

SEL2202: Writing New Worlds

Semester Two

SEL3373: Women of Virtue and Women of Pleasure: Sensibility in the Age of Reason

SEL1023: Transformations

SEL1004: Introduction to Literary Studies 2

My postgraduate teaching in the academic year 2013/14 includes:

Semester Two

SEL8359: Mind, Body, Affect

I also supervise undergraduate and postgraduate research projects.

• Kirkley L. Mary Wollstonecraft’s Translational Afterlife: French and German Rewritings of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in the Revolutionary Era. European Romantic Review 2022, 33(1), 1-24.
• Kirkley L. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In: Nancy E. Johnson and Paul Keen, ed. Mary Wollstonecraft in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, pp.155-163.
• Kirkley L. 'Original Spirit': Literary Translations and Translational Literature in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. In: Goodman RT, ed. Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp.13-26.
• Kirkley L. Maria, ou Le Malheur d'être femme: Translating Mary Wollstonecraft in Revolutionary France. Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2015, 38(2), 239-255.
• Kirkley L. Caroline of Lichtfield by Isabelle de Montolieu. In: Bending, S and Bygrave, S ed. Chawton House Library Series: Women's Novels 2014. London: Pickering & Chatto, 19, 304.
• Kirkley L. Hélène Cixous's Autre Bisexualité and the Eternal Feminine in the works of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. Women 2013, 24(4), 315-336.
• Kirkley L. The Question of Language: postcolonial translation in the bilingual collections of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Paul Muldoon. Translation Studies 2013, 6(3), 277-292.
• Kirkley L. Translating Rousseauism: Transformations of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie in the works of Helen Maria Williams and Maria Edgeworth. In: Dow, G; Brown, H, ed. Readers, Writers, Salonnières: Female Networks in Europe, 1700-1900. Bern, Oxford, Brussels, Frankfurt-am-Main, Berlin, New York, Vienna: Peter Lang, 2011, pp.93-118.
• Kirkley L. Feminism in translation: Re-writing the Rights of Women. In: Toremans, T; Verschueren, W, ed. Crossing Cultures: Nineteenth-Century Anglophone Literature in the Low Countries. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009, pp.189-200.
• Kirkley L. Rescuing the Rights of Woman: Mary Wollstonecraft in translation. In: Van Dijk, S; Fidecaro, A; Partzsch, H; Cossy, V, ed. Femmes écrivains à la croisée des langues / Women Writers at the Crossroads of Languages, 1700-2000. Geneva: Métispresses, 2008.
• Kirkley L. Elements of the Other: Mary Wollstonecraft and Translation. In: Dow, G, ed. Translators, Interpreters, Mediators: Women Writers 1700-1900. Bern: Peter Lang, 2007.
• Kirkley L. Pedagogy as (Cosmo)politics: Cultivating Benevolence in Mary Wollstonecraft's Educational Works. In: Joy L; Lim J, ed. Women's Literary Education, C. 1690-1850. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023. In Press.
• Kirkley L. Across disciplines, languages, and nations: Recent scholarship on Mary Wollstonecraft. Literature Compass 2022, 19(10), e12683.