Professor Catherine Wynne

I studied at the University of Galway, undertook an MA in Modern English and American Literature at University College Dublin and a doctorate at the University of Oxford.

I currently enjoy the role of Associate Dean for Research and Enterprise in the Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Education and teach undergraduates and supervise PhD students in the School of Humanities (English) at the University of Hull.

My research and publications cut across Victorian and post-nineteenth century literature and visual cultures to the contemporary, with particular focus on the Gothic, war art and memoir, Victorian theatre, travel writing, and colony and empire.

I have published monographs on Bram Stoker (Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage) and Conan Doyle (The Colonial Conan Doyle) and a biography of Victorian Britain’s leading war artist, Lady Butler (Lady Butler: War Artist and Traveller, 1846-1933). My Butler biography was reviewed in the Sunday Times and was described as ‘a history book as much as an artist biography’ which ‘draws on a cast of real-life characters who wrote letters, kept journals and published their travel writing and autobiographies. Elizabeth comes alive between the pages, often in her own words … Wynne’s skill is to anchor Elizabeth Butler in her own time, while allowing us to see and read her achievements, ambitions and particular skill through 21st-century eyes’ (Cristín Leach, 2019).

I have edited and co-edited books on Stoker’s theatrical writings (two volumes), Bram Stoker and the Gothic, the afterlives of Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, Victorian mesmerism, and two novellas by Conan Doyle and Stoker. I have also published numerous journal articles and book chapters which focus on the nineteenth century to the contemporary.

I am editor of a new edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for Oxford University Press (World’s Classics), which was published in 2025, and a new (joint edition) of The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Valley of Fear for Edinburgh University Press New Critical Editions of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle. I have forthcoming monograph on Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie in Egypt for Palgrave.

I was literary consultant and interviewee on BBC and Channel 4 TV programmes, and have recently been a contributor for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) on Daphne du Maurier for CBC Ideas hosted by Nahlah Ayed; Deutsche Welle (German National TV) on Bram Stoker; Irish national TV (RTE) and radio (Newstalk) on Bram Stoker and Lady Butler; Britain By Beach (Channel 4) on Bram Stoker; Books that Made Britain (BBC2) on Bram Stoker; BBC World Service (Conan Doyle); Woman’s Hour (Radio 4) on Victorian mesmerism.

I have been invited to deliver talks and lectures internationally (Tunisia, Germany, Ireland, UK) and at UK institutions, including the British Library, the National Army Museum, Ferens Art Gallery, and societies such as Friends of Ferens Art Gallery, Whitby Civic Society, Dracula Society (London), U3A (Whitby).

I have organized international conferences (including the Bram Stoker Centenary conference in 2012), and delivered alumni masterclasses which commenced during COVID. In 2023 the Pandemic Pages podcast, focusing on writings emerging from the Covid pandemic, was launched by Lucyl Harrison and which I co-hosted with Lucyl for the first two series (2023-2025).

I am the University of Hull academic champion for the University's partnership with Mariupol University and in partnership with academics at Mariupol University and the University of Hull have secured funding from the British Council to explore the role of the civic university. I work with British veterans and their families on the University's innovative Veteran Career Transition Accelerator programme, funding for which which I secured in collaboration with a University of Hull team, from the Armed Forces Covenant Trust.

I organise the University of Hull’s Barbara Canham Turner Lecture. I write for the national and international press, and I am a member of several literary and cultural societies. I was awarded a special category of fellowship from the English Association in 2023 in recognition of my ‘outstanding’ work for the community of English.

My research has been funded the British Council, British Academy (Stoker and Butler), the Marc Fitch Fund (Butler), Society for Theatre Research (Stoker), Royal Society of Edinburgh (Conan Doyle), City of Culture Fund, Hull and East Yorkshire Charitable Trust and others.

I supervise PhDs on travel writing and material cultures, on holy wells and springs and on Covid narratives (part of the University of Hull's 'Living with Death - Learning from Covid' research cluster).