Professor Karen Corrigan (Professor of Linguistics and English Language/Director of Research in Linguistics) - Corpus linguistics; English in Ireland/Northern England; historical English linguistics; Language variation and change; Language and migration; sociosyntax.

Dr Daniel Duncan (Lecturer in Sociolinguistics) - Sociolinguistics; linguistic variation; place; style in popular culture; (American) English.

Dr Niamh Kelly (Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology) - Phonetics, phonology; prosody; phonetics & phonology of multilingualism.

Dr Gabriel Martinez Vera (Lecturer in Pragmatics) - Semantics; pragmatics; syntactic theory; under-represented (Andean) languages; Romance linguistics; fieldwork; language documentation; bilingualism (second language acquisition, heritage language).

Dr Adam Mearns (Senior Lecturer in the History of the English Language) - The history of the English language (especially lexical semantics); Old English & Middle English language and literature; language variation and change (especially in the North East of England); corpora (construction, development and applications).

Dr Emma Nguyen (Lecturer in Child Language Acquisition) - First language acquisition of syntax and semantics; psycholinguistics; experimental linguistics.

Dr Heike Pichler (Senior Lecturer in Variationist Sociolinguistics) - Language variation and change; sociolinguistics; language contact; language and ageing; discourse-pragmatic features; spoken English.

Dr Geoff Poole (Senior Lecturer in Linguistics) - Syntactic theory; philosophy of linguistics; structure of Medieval Spanish; comparative Romance (Historical) syntax.

Professor Michelle Sheehan (Professor of Linguistics) - Comparative syntax; linguistic theory; Romance linguistics; heritage languages; language change; philosophy of language; pedagogical linguistics.

Dr Rory Turnbull (Lecturer in Phonetics and Phonology) - Phonetic reduction; laboratory phonology; prosody; phonetic psycholinguistics; network science; speech perception.

Dr William van der Wurff (Senior Lecturer in Historical Linguistics) - Language change; historical syntax; history of English; lexical innovation.

Dr Rebecca Woods (Senior Lecturer in Language and Cognition) - Child acquisition of syntax; semantics; pragmatics (monolingual or multilingual); syntactic theory; formal pragmatic theory; speech acts; codeswitching; heritage language syntax/semantics/pragmatics.

Professor James Annesley (Professor of American Literature) - 20th and 21st-century American fiction; consumer culture and contemporary lifestyle.

Dr Chloe Ashbridge (Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Literature) – 21st-century British literary culture and politics; millennial fiction; neoliberal governmentality.

Dr Mark Byers (Lecturer in Contemporary Poetry) - American modernism; British surrealism; late modernist poetry.

Professor Kate Chedgzoy (Professor of Renaissance Literature) - 17th-century literature and culture, with particular reference to questions of gender, sexuality, and national identity; Shakespeare; lesbian and gay theories and cultures; children's literature.

Dr Ruth Connolly (Senior Lecturer in 17th-century Literature) - 17th-century literature, especially poetry; early modern women's writing; scholarly editing; early modern cultures of print and manuscript.

Dr James Cummings (Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval English Literature and Digital Humanities) - Scholarly digital editing; digital publishing; late medieval drama/texts.

Dr Kate De Rycker (Lecturer in Renaissance Literature) - print authorship and literary reputations; metadramatic scenes or plays; European 'go-betweens' in the English theatre or print industry; theatre history; drama in print; popular print culture.

Dr Ella Dzelzainis (Senior Lecturer in 19th-century Literature) - 19th-century literature and intellectual history, especially the novel of reform; politics and representation; women writers; gender, sexuality and economics; Malthusian fictions.

Dr Helen Freshwater (Reader in Theatre and Performance) - Theatre for children and young people; audiences; 20th century British theatre; contemporary performance; the theatrical representation of the child.

Dr Stacy Gillis (Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature) - 20th-century British fiction; popular fiction; detective and sensation fiction; feminist theory; First World War.

Professor Matthew Grenby (Professor of 18_^th-century literature) - 18th-century literature; children's literature and culture; political novel; book history; history of heritage.

Dr James Harriman-Smith (Senior Lecturer in Restoration and 18th-century Literature) - Literary and intellectual history of the period 1660-1830; theatre; aesthetic theory.

Dr Rosalind Haslett (Lecturer in Dramatic Literature) - Dramaturgy and literary management; theatre history and historiography; British regional theatre; post-conflict Northern Irish theatre; playwriting.

Dr Jacob Jewusiak (Lecturer in Victorian Literature) - 19th and early-20th century literature, age studies, postcolonial theory, and the philosophy of time.

Dr Laura Kirkley (Senior Lecturer in 18th-century Literature) - Revolutionary feminism, particularly Mary Wollstonecraft; women's writing in the long 18th-century; 1790s radicalism; literary and cultural exchange between Britain and France; Enlightenment and Romantic cosmopolitanism.

Dr Kirsten MacLeod (Reader in Modernist Print Culture) - Victorian and modernist print culture; periodical studies; Aestheticism and Decadence; history of publishing and authorship; modernism.

Dr Robbie McLaughlan (Lecturer in English Literature) - Postcolonial Studies; the history of Empire; imperial cartography; the fin de siècle, colonialism and modernism; theory (particularly network theory, Marxism/Leninism and the history of psychoanalysis).

Dr Ella Mershon (Lecturer in Victorian Literature) – 19th-century literature, ecocriticism and the environmental humanities; science and technology studies; gender and sexuality studies; queer theory; science fiction.

Dr Emily Murphy (Senior Lecturer in Children’s Literature) - Post-1945 American literature (both for children and adults); childhood studies.

Dr Aditi Nafde (Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature) - Late medieval literature, especially literary manuscripts and early print.

Dr Meiko O'Halloran (Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature) - British and Scottish Romanticism; the 18th century and Romantic-era novel; periodical writing and the literary marketplace; Gothic literature in the 18th and 19th-centuries.

Dr Jennifer Orr (Senior Lecturer in 18th-century Literature) - Scottish and Irish Romantic period literature; radical poetry; print culture of the 'long' 18^th-century; labouring-class poetry; landscape and sense of place in Romantic poetry.

Dr Lucy Pearson (Senior Lecturer in Children's Literature) - Children's literature; modern and contemporary literature; book history; publishing history.

Professor James Procter (Professor of Modern English Literature & Postcolonial Literature) - Caribbean and Black British literature; postwar British literature; contemporary fiction; postcolonial writing/theory; short fiction and empire.

Dr Jonathan Quayle (Lecturer in Romantic Literature) - Romantic and 18th-century utopianism; the work of Percy Shelley; utopian poetry.

Professor Jo Robinson (Professor of Theatre and Performance) - Histories and practice of regional theatre and performance.

Professor Michael Rossington (Professor of Romantic Literature) - Romantic period poetry and life writing; the Shelleys; scholarly editing; reception; translation.

Professor Neelam Srivastava (Professor of Postcolonial and World Literature) - Indian/South Asian literature in English; postcolonial theory; cultural histories of Italian colonialism and postcolonialism; postcolonial cinema; postcolonial translation; anti-colonial writing between 1930 and 1970.

Dr Leanne Stokoe (Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature) - Romanticism and genre; utilitarian ethics and economics and the philosophies of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Dr Fionnghuala Sweeney (Reader in American Literature) - American, African American and Caribbean literature in the 19th and 20th centuries; slavery, literature and visual culture; Afromodernisms; theoretical intersections between the black Atlantic, post/colonialism and diaspora; travel writing; race and performance.

Dr Emma Whipday (Lecturer in Renaissance Literature) - Family, gender, and power on the early modern stage, and in early modern culture; the political significance of household dynamics; the generic expectations that shape texts; and the interplay between performers, playing spaces and audiences on the early modern stage and street.

Professor Anne Whitehead (Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature) - Modern and contemporary fiction; literatures of war, conflict and resolution; trauma and memory studies; care, empathy and literature; medical humanities.

Dr Tara Bergin (Senior Lecturer in Writing Poetry) - The practice of poetic translation and methods of creativity.

Dr Zoe Cooper (Lecturer in Creative Writing) - Playwriting.

Dr Tina Gharavi (Senior Lecturer in Digital Media) - Experimental documentary practice; screenwriting; community.

Dr Lars Iyer (Reader in Creative Writing) - Creative writing theory and practice (prose); literary and critical theory; the philosophy of literature; aesthetics (especially music); continental philosophy from the nineteenth century to the present (especially Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Phenomenology, Heidegger, Bataille, Blanchot, Levinas).

Professor Sinead Morrissey (Professor of Creative Writing) - Contemporary poetics; ideas relating to voice, history, visual media (photography and early cinema) and politics, with a particular interest in Russia and the Soviet Experiment (1917-1991).

Professor Alex Pheby (Professor of Creative Writing) - Contemporary fiction; creative writing; critical theory.

Professor Jacob Polley (Professor of Creative Writing) - Contemporary British poetry; contemporary fiction and non-fiction; collaboration.

Professor Preti Taneja (Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing) - Creative non-fiction; form, intertextuality and intersectionality; race, decolonisation, culture and literature; world literature; modern and contemporary prison writing; global modernisms; JM Coetzee; Shakespeare and Human Rights.

Medieval and Early Modern Studies

Newcastle University

A Guide to Researchers and Potential Supervisors

Introduction

Newcastle University has a vibrant and broad community of researchers working in the medieval and early modern periods, spanning English literature, history, archaeology, music, classics, and linguistics.

This guide is arranged by discipline and is designed for postdoctoral researchers who are considering approaching Newcastle University as a host institution for fellowship applications, or who are seeking supervisors. Each entry includes the researcher's title and position, their departmental home, a brief summary of their research interests, and a direct link to their university profile page where further information — including publications lists — can be found.

1.  English Literature and Linguistics

The Medieval and Early Modern research cluster in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL) covers Old and Middle English, literature from the 14th to the 17th centuries, lexical semantics, literary manuscript studies, book history, history of rhetoric, women's writing, textual and digital editing, and performance-led research.

Professor Kate Chedgzoy  |  Professor of Renaissance Literature

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/katechedgzoy.html

Kate Chedgzoy is an intersectional feminist scholar of early modern literature and culture. Her research centres on the politics of gender and sexuality in textual production, examining how cultural authority is exercised and contested through reading, writing and performance. She established her reputation as a Shakespeare scholar before moving to focus on women's cultural production in the British Atlantic world (c.1550–1700), with a strong emphasis on archive-based historicist scholarship. More recently she has turned to representations of childhood and textual production by children in early modern culture. She welcomes research proposals related to feminist and/or queer approaches to early modern literature, women's writing, and cultural production.

Dr Ruth Connolly  |  Senior Lecturer in Seventeenth-Century Literature

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/ruthconnolly.html

Ruth Connolly specialises in seventeenth-century English literature, with particular expertise in poetry and women's writing, and in scholarly editing. Her work engages directly with the politics of early modern poetics especially in their intersection with the ‘high’ politics of the public sphere. She has edited the complete Poetry of Ben Jonson (Longmann Annotated English Poets, 2022, with Tom Cain) and the Poetry of Robert Herrick (Oxford University Press, 2013), and is a contributing editor to the online Hester Pulter Project. She has just completed (with Annie Tindley) a cross-period, cross-disciplinary edited collection on Culture, Capital and the Country House in Britain and Ireland (for Manchester UP’s Studies in Imperialism series) which studies landed power. Her current monograph project examines the politics and affects of poetry in the immediate post-civil war period, focusing on the civil war afterlife of Ben Jonson, the poetry of Richard Lovelace, Hester Pulter's poetic self-fashioning and the influence of Thomas Hobbes’s work on post-war poetic manifestoes. She welcomes research proposals across any of these areas.

Dr James Cummings  |  Reader in Digital Textual Studies and Late Medieval Literature

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/jamescummings.html

James Cummings’ primary areas of academic interest involve investigating technology and standards for digital scholarly editions, as well as records of performance of late medieval drama. He is the current Chair of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Consortium. He welcomes applications for research supervision especially on topics that intersect with: scholarly digital editing, how critical editions should function in a digital world; digital publishing, markup, and our complex digital interactions with text(s); late medieval drama, records of drama, medieval performance, performance places; late medieval texts and digital representations of them.

Dr Kate De Rycker  |  Lecturer in Renaissance Literature

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/katede-rycker.html

Kate De Rycker's research explores the 'Renaissance urban gothic' — the ways in which freelance writers of the early modern period (c.1520s–1660s) used modes of the gothic, alchemy, and diabolism as metaphors for social precarity and urban danger. Her work ranges across Italian and English literary cultures, covering performance, printed prose and plays, and manuscript circulation. She is a co-editor of the New Critical Edition of Thomas Nashe (Oxford University Press) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Thomas Nashe. She also co-led the AHRC-funded Penniless? Project exploring Nashe's Pierce Penilesse and contemporary precarious employment. She welcomes proposals on print authorship, the urban gothic, European 'go-betweens' in the English theatre, and theatre history.

Dr Joseph Hone  |  Reader in Literature and Book History

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/josephhone.html

Joseph Hone is a Reader in Literature and Book History whose research spans poetry, intellectual history, book history, and bibliography from the early modern period to the present day. He won the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2022. His work focuses on the communication of political ideas across diverse genres and material forms, and on instances of 'book crime' ranging from seditious libel to forgery and theft. His books include Literature and Party Politics at the Accession of Queen Anne (Oxford University Press, 2017), Alexander Pope in the Making (OUP, 2021), The Paper Chase (Chatto & Windus, 2020) — on the underground Whig press in the early eighteenth century — and The Book Forger (Chatto & Windus, 2024), on the Victorian bibliographical fraudster Thomas James Wise. He is currently editing volumes of The Oxford Edition of the Writings of Alexander Pope and working on a project on clandestine printing and the underground book trade in eighteenth-century England. He welcomes proposals in bibliography and book history from the early modern period to the present day.

Dr Laura Kirkley  |  Senior Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/laurakirkley.html

Laura Kirkley's research focuses on cross-cultural exchange and women's writing and translation in the eighteenth century and Romantic period, combining gender and feminist theory with theories of literary and cultural translation and cosmopolitan political philosophy. She has particular expertise in the works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and other women writers and radicals of the Revolutionary and Romantic eras. Her monograph Mary Wollstonecraft: Cosmopolitan was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022. She has also edited Caroline of Lichtfield (Pickering & Chatto, 2013; Routledge, 2016), and is currently editing Wollstonecraft's translations for The Oxford Works of Mary Wollstonecraft. She is a founding member of The Gothic Women Project and is co-editing The Routledge Companion to Gothic Women Writers. She welcomes proposals on eighteenth-century women's writing, translation studies, women's literary networks, and feminist literary theory.

Dr Adam Mearns  |  Lecturer in the History of the English Language

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/adammearns.html

Adam Mearns works on the history of the English language, with particular interests in Old English, Middle English, and the historical development of English vocabulary and grammar. His research encompasses the lexical and semantic history of Early English, with expertise relevant to students working on language change, medieval English texts, and historical linguistics.

Dr Aditi Nafde  |  Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/aditinafde.html

Aditi Nafde is a book historian specialising in late medieval literature, literary manuscripts, and the transition from manuscript to print culture. Her DPhil examined the manuscript presentation of the poetical works of Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve in the early fifteenth century. Her AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship funded the Manuscripts After Print (c.1450–1550) project, which investigates what happened to scribal practice in the immediate aftermath of print, exploring the endurance and adaptability of handwriting from the age of manuscripts to the age of digital books. She is writing a monograph on this topic and is active in digital humanities through collaborations including the ATNU project. She welcomes proposals on late medieval literature, book history, palaeography, and digital editing.

Dr Emma Whipday  |  Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature

Department: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics (SELLL)  |  University Profile: /elll/people/profile/emmawhipday.html

Emma Whipday's research focuses on family, gender, and power on the early modern stage, and on practice-led research in early modern drama. Her monograph Shakespeare's Domestic Tragedies (Cambridge University Press, 2019) was co-winner of the Shakespeare's Globe Book Award 2020, and she has published widely on domestic violence in Shakespeare, staging the home, and early modern true crime pamphlets. Her current project explores the cultural significance of the brother-sister relationship in early modern drama. She co-runs the Newcastle University Performance Research Network. She welcomes proposals on Shakespeare, early modern drama, domesticity, gender and sexuality, witchcraft, and practice as research.

2.  History

The School of History, Classics and Archaeology hosts a substantial number of historians whose research focuses on the medieval and/or early modern periods. Their work spans political, intellectual, cultural, religious, and environmental history, covering Britain, Europe, and the Islamic world.

Dr Scott Ashley  |  Lecturer in Medieval History

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/scottashley.html

Scott Ashley specialises in early medieval northern Europe, particularly Britain and Scandinavia. His work situates these regions within a 'global' context, and he has been involved in developing 'Medieval World History' as a field, contributing to the AHRC Defining the Global Middle Ages project. He has published on Carolingian astronomy, Alfredian England, Scandinavian contacts with Byzantium, and Icelandic Sagas. He is also very interested in environmental history and the Anthropocene, particularly narratives of pre-modern climate and the sixth-century climate crisis in Scandinavia. He welcomes postgraduate proposals in early medieval Britain (especially Northumbria), the Viking diaspora, medievalism, and any aspect of environmental history.

Dr Lauren Darwin  |  Lecturer in Early Modern History

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/laurendarwin.html

Lauren Darwin is a historian of Black and British Imperial History, whose research focuses on race and marginalisation in Britain and the British Empire from the later early modern period. Her PhD examined convict transportation through the lens of the British slave trade, exposing the interconnected histories of both systems of coerced migration in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She is currently researching the experiences of Black women in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, and developing a project on the North East's ties to the British Empire. While her primary focus is on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, her work engages with early modern foundations.

Professor Rachel Hammersley  |  Professor of Intellectual History

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/rachelhammersley.html

Rachel Hammersley is an intellectual historian working on past political ideas, their development, dissemination and influence. Her research focuses on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly on republicanism, democracy, and revolution in Britain and France. She has published an intellectual biography of the seventeenth-century political thinker James Harrington (Oxford University Press, 2019), and her book The English Republican Tradition and Eighteenth-Century France (Manchester University Press, 2010) examined how the French revolutionaries drew on seventeenth-century English republican thought. She welcomes proposals on intellectual history, republicanism, the English Revolution (1640–1660), seventeenth-century Britain or France, and the Enlightenment.

Dr Simon Mills  |  Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/simonmills.html

Simon Mills works broadly on the cultural, religious, and intellectual history of Europe between c.1450 and 1800. His research examines the relationship between Europe and the Ottoman Empire, the histories of biblical and oriental studies, the history of philosophy, and 'intellectual geography' — how people in the past knew what they knew through the circulation of books, manuscripts, and letters. His first book, A Commerce of Knowledge: Trade, Religion, and Scholarship between England and the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2020), was shortlisted for both the Royal Historical Society Gladstone Prize and the Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Book Prize. He welcomes proposals on early modern intellectual history, the history of Arabic and oriental studies, sacred geography, and cultural exchange between England and the Middle East.

Dr Adam Morton  |  Reader in Early Modern British History

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/adammorton.html

Adam Morton works on 'long Reformation' Britain, which he defines as running from the fifteenth to the early eighteenth century. His research examines the cultural impact of Protestantism, the development of anti-Catholicism, the inter-related nature of toleration and intolerance, and the impact of Reformed theology on visual and material cultures. He has published widely on satire and laughter in early modern polemic, the representation of queenly consorts, and religious print culture. He is attached to the HERA-funded Marrying Cultures project. He welcomes postgraduate proposals on gender in the long Reformation, anti-Catholicism in England, popular Anglicanism, early modern stereotypes, and Protestantism's relationship with rhetoric.

Dr Nicola Clarke  |  Senior Lecturer in the History of the Islamic World

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/nicolaclarke.html

Nicola Clarke is a historian of medieval Islamic Iberia (al-Andalus), with expertise in historiography and social history. Her primary research focus is on representations of gender — particularly masculinity — in legal and literary texts from medieval Islamic Iberia, as well as medieval Islamic intellectual life, including historiography, geography, and travel writing in Arabic. Her monograph The Muslim Conquest of Iberia: Medieval Arabic Narratives (Routledge, 2012) examines how Arabic-language chronicles constructed the story of the Umayyad conquest of Iberia. Her more recent work has explored constructions of elite masculinity and hierarchy in early Andalusi chronicles. She welcomes research proposals on any aspect of the early or medieval history of the Islamic world, with a preference for social, intellectual, and political history — including projects with a pre-modern component on receptions of the medieval Islamic past in the present.

Dr Katie East  |  Senior Lecturer in History

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/katherineeast.html

Katie East is an intellectual historian whose research focuses on radical ideas in early modern England, with particular interest in the intellectual legacy of the Roman Republic and the history of classical scholarship. Her first monograph, The Radicalization of Cicero: John Toland and Strategic Editing in the Early Enlightenment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), examines how the subversive intellectual John Toland exploited his editorial role to align Cicero's legacy with his republicanism and anticlericalism. Her Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2015–18) extended this to examine how Cicero's sceptical philosophy was deployed by orthodox and heterodox writers from Herbert of Cherbury's De Veritate (1645) to Hume's Dialogues (1779). Her research integrates the history of scholarship into intellectual history, demonstrating how the transmission and editing of classical texts shaped radical thought. She is a co-editor of Radical Ideas and the Crisis of Christianity in England, 1640–1740 (Boydell, 2024). She welcomes proposals on intellectual history, classical reception in the early modern period, and the history of free thought and anti-clericalism.

3.  Archaeology

The Archaeology section of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology includes several researchers whose work focuses on medieval and early medieval periods, ranging from landscape archaeology and settlement studies to material culture and the archaeology of religion and power.

Professor Sam Turner  |  Professor of Archaeology; Co-Director, Newcastle University Centre for Landscape

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/samturner.html

Sam Turner's research focuses on how landscapes have developed from ancient times onwards, with a special emphasis on medieval archaeology and landscape history. He co-directs the Newcastle University Centre for Landscape (including the McCord Centre for Landscape) and is General Editor of The Archaeology of Northern Europe series (Brepols). His published work covers early medieval Northumbria and northern England, Christian conversion-period landscapes, monastic landscapes, and the long-term development of rural and Mediterranean landscapes. He has supervised PhD projects on early medieval archaeology, landscape change in the medieval and post-medieval periods, Northumbrian archaeology, and heritage management. He actively supervises visiting international postdoctoral researchers and welcomes proposals on any of these themes.

Dr Duncan Wright  |  Senior Lecturer in Medieval Archaeology; Editor, Medieval Archaeology

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/duncanwright.html

Duncan Wright specialises in medieval archaeology, with particular expertise in the archaeology of inequality, early medieval environments, sacred landscapes, and the early medieval Church. He is Principal Investigator of the AHRC-funded Where Power Lies project, which conducted the first systematic integrated study of physical evidence for early lordly centres in medieval England (c.AD 800–1200). The project, which identified Harold Godwinson's lordly complex, attracted international press coverage and was shortlisted for Current Archaeology's Research Project of the Year 2025. He is also Co-Lead of the AHRC Ecologies of Governance project examining inequality and rulership in early medieval kin-based societies. He welcomes proposals on early medieval settlement, sacred landscapes, the early Church, and archaeologies of inequality.

Professor Rob Collins |  Professor of Frontier Archaeology

Department: School of History, Classics and Archaeology (HCA)  |  University Profile: /hca/people/profile/robcollins.html

Rob Collins’ research interests fall within five broad themes: frontier and border studies; artefacts and material culture; the collapse of complex societies; public archaeology and perceptions of the past

Heritage In practice, this has led to his specialization in the transition of Roman frontiers in late antiquity, with a particular focus on Hadrian's Wall. His research makes use of landscape analysis and archaeological remains of built structures and small finds to provide a social interpretation of the material record. Through his work with Hadrian's Wall, and the Frontiers of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, his research has also moved into the sphere of Critical Heritage Studies. He welcomes comparative work on frontiers including, but not limited to, Roman frontiers and particularly projects focused on the material record.

4.  Music

The School of Arts and Cultures (Music) at Newcastle University includes internationally recognised researchers in early music, particularly late medieval and Tudor liturgical and polyphonic music. Their work engages with musical manuscripts, soundscape studies, the music print trade, and performance practice.

Professor Magnus Williamson  |  Professor of Early Music

Department: School of Arts and Cultures — Music  |  University Profile: /sacs/people/profile/magnuswilliamson.html

Magnus Williamson is one of the UK's leading scholars of late medieval and early Tudor polyphony. His research focuses on the sources and social, ritual, and spatial contexts of English music from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with particular expertise in liturgical music, the soundscape of the pre-Reformation parish, and the music of the Tudor Chapel Royal. He is Chairman of the British Academy's Early English Church Music series (General Editor 2008–21) and has produced editions and studies of the Eton Choirbook, Tudor partbooks, and the Petre Gradual (held in Newcastle University's Robinson Library). His AHRC Tudor Partbooks project (2014–17) transformed understanding of Tudor music manuscripts. He is Co-Investigator on the Aural Histories (AHRC), Henry VIII on Tour (AHRC), and Bee-ing Human (Leverhulme) projects. He welcomes proposals on Renaissance musical sources, historical contexts, sixteenth-century contrapuntal techniques, keyboard improvisation, editing, and notation.

Professor Kirsten Gibson  |  Professor of Early Modern Music and Culture

Department: School of Arts and Cultures — Music  |  University Profile: ncl.ac.uk/sacs/music/about/staff/

Kirsten Gibson is a musicologist whose research covers early modern music history, with a particular focus on music in England in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. She has worked on the music print trade, networks and recreational music-making in Cambridge and Newcastle upon Tyne. She co-edited Music in North-East England, 1500–1800 (Boydell, 2020, with Magnus Williamson and Roz Southey) and, with Simon D.I. Fleming, The Music Trade in Regional Britain, 1650–1800 (Boydell, 2025). Her current research focuses on printed music books in early modern England within the wider context of the commercial music trade, including the movement of musical goods via the domestic coastal trade and evidence of music-making activities in the Duke of Northumberland's archives at Alnwick Castle.

Dr Larry Zazzo  |  Senior Lecturer in Music; Head of Performance

Department: School of Arts and Cultures — Music  |  University Profile: /sacs/people/profile/lawrencezazzo.html

Larry Zazzo is an internationally acclaimed countertenor and historical musicologist, with a performing career spanning the world's leading opera houses and concert halls (Metropolitan Opera New York, Opera de Paris, Royal Opera House, Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Tokyo, Seoul). He holds a PhD from Queen's University, Belfast on Handel's bilingual oratorio revivals, and his research encompasses Baroque opera and oratorio reception history, historical performance practice, opera libretto authorship recognition, and performer wellbeing. His discography includes more than 25 recordings of rarely-performed Baroque vocal works for labels including Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, and Sony Classics. He was Principal Investigator on the British Academy-funded 'Voiceless?' project studying the effects of COVID-19 on classical singers. At Newcastle he leads the Performing Early Opera module, directing fully-staged historically-informed productions of works including Handel's Acis and Galatea and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. He is a council member of the International Handel Society and the London Handel Institute, and is currently editing the Hallische Handel-Ausgabe edition of Handel's The Triumph of Time and Truth. He welcomes projects whose research is germane to any of these areas.