There is a thriving culture of research into Creative Writing at the University of Surrey. See below for details of our researchers' interests, and samples of their creative work.

Liam Murray Bell

Liam’s research investigates the role of women within the context of the Northern Irish Troubles (1969 – present). He is currently writing a novel based on this research that details the coming-of-age of Aoife Brennan, who becomes involved in paramilitary violence after the death of her brother.

A graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast (BA Hons) and the University of Glasgow (MLitt), Liam has had creative work published in New Writing Scotland 21 & 26; Wordriver, the literary journal of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; and Let’s Pretend: 37 Stories about (in)fidelity. He is also co-editor of the upcoming Writing Urban Space, from Zero Books, and has critical work upcoming in the Routledge journal New Writing: the International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing

Amanda Finelli

Amanda's current work in progress, The Mistress of Ceremonies, focuses upon 19th and 20th Century notions of the hysterical woman, in both theoretical and clinical terms. In adopting this psychoanalytic framework, she hopes to locate the absences in modern-day American health culture which are cultivated and enabled in the paranoid space established by an inability to define and internalise a cultural past, and by extension a cultural identity. Through hysteria theory as presented by Jean-Martin Charcot, Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer, Amanda attempts to narrow the inevitable gaps which become facilitated by a non-existent identity and consider the ways in which this manifests in a cultural hysteria, which is then consequently evidenced through the 21st Century mental health industry in the United States.

Prospective PhD Researchers

We welcome research proposals from prospective postgraduate students in the area of Creative Writing. Specific staff members' expertise can be viewed on their individual profiles. Broadly speaking, however, we are particularly interested in proposals which seek to:

• investigate and realise links between the creative and the critical dimensions of text
• explore the potentials and intersections of multiple modes and media for contemporary storytelling (e.g. the visual in relation to the verbal)
• elucidate the role of creative writing as a vehicle of critical understanding across periods, genres and cultures

For further information, please e-mail Paul Vlitos (p.vlitos@surrey.ac.uk).