PhD Students

PhD student applications to CIRCL
Present PhD students
Past PhD students and their thesis abstracts

PhD student applications to CIRCL

CIRCL supervisors welcome applications for PhD research from applicants who have an interest in advanced research in Children's Literature, as well as in literary and cultural studies in general. Please contact them by e-mail to describe your project, to see if it would be suitable for supervision at CIRCL.
For information on fees, please go to the University web-site post-graduate fees page.

CIRCL PhD graduates have gone on to achieve academic careers at the Universities of Reading, Roehampton, Plymouth, Exeter and East Anglia, as well as at a Japanese University.

(The photo shows Reading's Graduate School for Arts and Humanities
where the PhDs have study and meeting spaces.
Photo copyright: Professor Klaus Meyer, used by kind permission)

(Former PhD student Helen Ainslie completing her PhD here!) [photo helen ainslie]

Present PhD students

CIRCL has a large and active group of PhD students.

Supervisor Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein:

Kia Michalopoulou (researching children's detective fiction)
Giselle Tsai (researching fear and childhood)
Yu-Kuan Chen (researching vision)
Elizabeth Billinger (researching childhood and food)
Chris Milson (researching childhood and language)
Kristina West (researching transcendentalist constructions of childhood)
Ruth Talbot-Curtis (researching adolescence, sexuality and vampire fiction)

Supervisor Dr Sue Walsh:

Miriam Morris (researching children's series fiction)

Supervisor Dr Neil Cocks:

Jessica Medhurst Sage (researching childhood and sexuality)
Zoe Roxon (researching childhood and the market)

Past PhD students and their thesis abstracts

Dr Charlie (Charlotte) White: 'The Child in Gothic'.

Dr Kirsty Pennicard-Wood: 'Plotting the Plot: The Plot Unravelled'.

Dr Catrin Edwards: 'Psychoanalysis Reading Psychoanalysis: Questions of Resistance and Interpretation'

Dr Hilary Fraser: '"Small Points of Difference": the Child in Evolutionary Narratives'

Dr Helen Ainslie: '"Why Autism?" Perspectives, Communication, Community'

Dr Elisabeth Eldridge: '"In the Beginning was the Word" ?: Quoting God and constructing the Child Reader in contemporary retellings of biblical narratives for children'

Dr Louise Tondeur: 'Reading Hair Queer'

Dr Sarah Spooner: 'Knowing its Place? Language and Landscape in Arthur Ransome'

Dr Hannah Smith (from January 2011 married name: Dr Hannah Anglin-Jaffe): 'Signs, Text, Truth: Constructions of Deafness'

Dr Yuko Ashitagawa: 'Reading and Writing the Primitive: Written Oralities and Fairy-Tale Studies'
After her graduation in 2005, Yuko set up a branch of CIRCL in Japan. If you are interested in joining CIRCL-Japan's meetings, do e-mail Yuko at: circljp@hotmail.com or see the CIRCL-Japan web-page on this site for further information.