School of Humanities

Our ‘Writing the Environment’ research shapes and shift attitudes towards our planet and its future survival. Inherently interdisciplinary, research in this field adopts arts and sciences approaches to explore the power of language, literature, and the creative word.

Our collaborative projects learn from the past, from cultures worldwide and from conversations with the sciences to rethink our relationship with the environment – for now and the future.

Drawing on expertise from across Creative writing, English language, and English literature, our researchers are involved in a number of large, externally funded projects. Examples include analysing parliamentary discourse surrounding renewable energies; and exploring flooding in literature and history through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded project Risky Cities: Living with Water in an Uncertain Future Climate.

Researchers in this group connect with the work of the interdisciplinary Larkin Centre for Poetry and Creative Writing and the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre for Water Cultures. They work closely with colleagues in the University’s Energy and Environment Institute.

Featured project.

By the Rising Tide of Humber: Flooding Andrew Marvell’s Hull

Writing Lives explores links between writers, writing, and life events, focusing on aspects of the life cycle in literature – from birth to death and bereavement. We also focus on female writers and research into neglected or underrepresented lives, and explore links between writing and health, with projects on disease, mental health, and anxiety

Research in this group is highly collaborative, characterised by knowledge exchange, co-design and co-production. Creative writers work closely with community arts organisations, theatre companies, and healthcare practitioners to enable disadvantaged and marginalised groups to co-produce creative outputs about their experiences.

Our University-funded, collaborative, and creative-critical project on writing and bereavement, Literature of Sympathy and Solace (LoSS), resulted in the publication of Legacies of Loss (2019). This collection of writings on mourning and solace included new creative pieces by writers from across the department.

Researchers in this group connect with the Larkin Centre for Poetry and Creative Writing and work closely with colleagues in the Faculty of Health Sciences.

With its focus on the marginal, mysterious, and uncanny – and with themes of violence, entrapment, and transgression – Gothic fiction is characterised by a focus on the criminal. Crime fiction, in turn, can evoke characteristically Gothic reactions in readers. Our Crime and Gothic research explores the close connections between the gothic, the criminal and the carceral.

This research theme is a rich seam of interrelated and interdisciplinary projects that span Creative writing, English language and English literature. Researchers in this group work across Crime and Gothic themes and connect with researchers in the cognate disciplines of film studies, criminology, and sociology. The group has close connections with the interdisciplinary Centre for Cultures of Incarceration in conjunction with the Wilberforce Institute too.

We’re developing knowledge exchange partnerships with the digital industries and community groups taking Gothic to new audiences.

Our focus on EcoGothic uses Gothic fiction to engage wider publics with global environmental concerns. Our researchers are also developing new educational resources through the Gothic Play project: an educational video game aimed at school children with autism.

Our aim is to enhance the reach and impact of our research in alignment with three strategic themes:

• Global challenges – conflict, the environment, borders, mobility and migration
• Historic and contemporary rights – historic and modern slavery, indigenous rights, gender and marginalised communities
• Digital storytelling - immersive environments, data visualisation, gaming and new digital audiences
  
  

The first is to develop an interdisciplinary approach to contemporary global challenges by expanding the reach of our global engagement. Linking specifically with communities and peoples who have traditionally been relegated to the global margins, and using the mechanism of the environmental humanities, we’re making a defined contribution to the University of Hull’s strategic focus on fairness, green economies and coping with environmental change.

Second, we will provide fresh perspectives on and enhance engagement with pressing global issues – including modern slavery, the politics of race in postsocialist states, indigenous rights, water cultures and women’s rights – through our research groups and contributions to University institutes.

The third is to contribute to the development of the UK’s cultural research infrastructure, with a focus on e-infrastructure; the demand for which has been sharply increased as a result of COVID-19. We seek to enhance the cultural value of research, and to use digital technology to engage audiences of the future with the UK’s diverse cultural assets.

Our discovery-led research in the fields of slavery, disaster risk reduction and indigenous environmentalism has delivered significant impact.

Research projects in the department have been supported by over £3 million in competitive funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Leverhulme Trust and the British Academy.

We work closely with the University’s Wilberforce Institute, making a significant contribution to the critical investigation of the history of transatlantic slavery and driving social responses to modern-day slavery and exploitation.

Through the Heritage Consortium and in AHRC-funded partnerships with the British Library, we help shape heritage sector policy.

Our research has informed the decolonisation of national collections and enhanced public understanding of the UK’s complex maritime and colonial histories – and their resonance in the present.

Our work also shapes policy in communities most affected by climate change and natural disaster – whether typhoons in the Philippines or earthquakes in Kazakhstan.

We’re leading the way in shaping future research agendas, through the global and collaborative ‘Treatied Spaces’ research group.

Treatied Spaces is the first group to deepen historical understanding of treaties as dynamic historical documents that remain central to contemporary debates on social and environmental justice in American and transnational contexts.

The group hosts one of the initial 10 Global Professorships awarded by the British Academy. It is also engaged in a large AHRC-funded collaborative re-assessment of the British Crown’s role as a diplomatic sovereign, and shapes academic and public debates through podcasts and innovative series Cambridge Elements in Indigenous Environmental Research.

The department’s research engagement is global in scope. Our research on historic and contemporary slavery works with a wide range of non-government organisations as well as legal and policy communities. Our work has shaped the ways that children learn – and changed how museums, galleries and archives interpret and present their holdings in ways that raise awareness of the diversity and complexity of the past. Using digital platforms – from data visualisations to soundscapes, podcasts and social media – we have created digital spaces in which new audiences can engage with our research.

Hull History Centre

Hull History Centre is the home for the University and city's archives and is also a specialised local studies library.

The archives date back to 1299 and are amongst the best in the country. Resources include records reflecting Hull's maritime history; papers owned by some of Hull's most notable figures including Amy Johnson and William Wilberforce; plus over 100,000 photographs, illustrations, maps and plans. It's a fantastic resource for your studies.

Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation

The Wilberforce Institute produces world-class research on historic and contemporary slavery. It also hosts a growing library and archive of books, materials, and electronic collections relating to slavery past and present.

Blaydes Maritime Centre

Research at the Blaydes Maritime Centre focuses on education and knowledge exchange in relation to the interaction of human societies and the marine environment.

Located in a Grade II* listed Georgian merchants’ house at the heart of the historic port of Hull, the centre is home to a specialist library collection. It also hosts a range of talks, lectures and other public outreach events.

Brynmor Jones Library

Our innovative research activity is enhanced by the University’s significant investment in library services. The Brynmor Jones Library – refurbished in 2014 with a total spend of £28m – boasts an outstanding research collection consisting of 1 million monographs plus a yearly spend of around £2 million on journal subscriptions and databases. The library has world-class resources in emerging topical areas of history – particularly the history of Native North America, historic and contemporary slavery.