Dr Stewart Mottram

Dr Stewart Mottram

Director of Research, School of Humanities, and Reader in English Literature

+44 (0)1482 465597 | S.Mottram@hull.ac.uk

Faculty and Department

  • Faculty of Arts Cultures and Education
  • School of Humanities

Related groups

  • English

Summary

Dr Stewart Mottram is Reader in English Literature and specializes in environmental approaches to literature, with a focus on the writing of flood risk regions across time.

In his current work, Stewart collaborates with environmental specialists from across the humanities and sciences to foreground the history of flooding and its role in shaping the literatures and cultures of North Sea regions that continue to live with flood risk today. He leads on the AHRC/XR Stories funded Rising Tide of Humber project, which recreates historical flooding within the Humber estuary using virtual reality in order to raise awareness of today's changing climate (risingtide.hull.ac.uk).

Stewart has held fellowships from the Leverhulme Trust (2008-10) and AHRC (2014-15). He is Co-I on the AHRC Risky Cities project at Hull (2020-23) and Co-Director of the University of Hull's Centre for Water Cultures.

Stewart is author of over 25 publications, including two research monographs and a co-edited collection, and he is particularly recognized for his work on Hull poet, Andrew Marvell (1621-78). His most recent book, ‘Ruin and Reformation in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Marvell’, was published by Oxford University Press in 2019. His research on Andrew Marvell and medical cures for malaria in seventeenth-century England was first reported in The Observer newspaper in August 2020, and is available to read open access in the journal The Seventeenth Century (2021).

Stewart is also a published poet, and his latest poem, ‘In Search of Appleton’, is out now with Broken Sleep Books as part of a new collection of poems - ‘Companions of his Thoughts More Green’ (2022) - to mark the 400th anniversary of Andrew Marvell’s birth.

Stewart is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), a Fellow of the RSA (FRSA), and a member of the AHRC’s Peer Review College.

Level 4

- Poetry, Past and Present (module leader)

Level 5

- Writing the Environment (module leader)

Level 6

- Dissertation (supervisor)

Level 7

- Climate Fiction (module leader)

- Dissertation (supervisor)

Recent outputs

View more outputs

Book Chapter

Rereading Ruins: Edmund Spenser and Scottish Presbyterianism

Mottram, S. (2020). Rereading Ruins: Edmund Spenser and Scottish Presbyterianism. In A. Walsham, B. Wallace, C. Law, & B. Cummings (Eds.), Memory and the English Reformation (223-237). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Journal Article

Learning histories, participatory methods and creative engagement for climate resilience

McDonagh, B., Brookes, E., Smith, K., Worthen, H., Coulthard, T., Hughes, G., …Chamberlain, J. (2023). Learning histories, participatory methods and creative engagement for climate resilience. Journal of Historical Geography, 82, 91-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2023.09.002

Kate Smith Amy Skinner Thomas Coulthard Gill Hughes Briony McDonagh Hannah Worthen Ed Brookes

Deluge and disease: plague, the poetry of flooding, and the history of health inequalities in Andrew Marvell's Hull

Mottram, S. (2023). Deluge and disease: plague, the poetry of flooding, and the history of health inequalities in Andrew Marvell’s Hull. Seventeenth Century, https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2022.2142656

"A most excellent medicine": Malaria, Mithridate, and the death of Andrew Marvell

Mottram, S. (2021). “A most excellent medicine”: Malaria, Mithridate, and the death of Andrew Marvell. Seventeenth Century, 36(4), 653-679. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2021.1901240

Book review: The concept of nature in Early Modern English Literature

Mottram, S. (in press). Book review: The concept of nature in Early Modern English Literature. Seventeenth Century, 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117x.2019.1615540

Research interests

Literature and environment, eco-criticism, environmental humanities, seventeenth-century studies, digital heritage, arts and heritage community engagement.

Lead investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

HIKE: The Water Cultures Hull-Utrecht Symposium: Living with Risk, Learning through Cross-Cultural Knowledge Exchange

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£2,271.00

Started

9 August 2023

Status

Ongoing

Project

By the rising tide of Humber: Flooding Andrew Marvell's Hull

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£7,658.00

Started

1 October 2019

Status

Complete

Co-investigator

Project

Funder

Grant

Started

Status

Project

The University of Hull Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre on Water Cultures

Funder

The Leverhulme Trust

Grant

£1,350,000.00

Started

1 June 2021

Status

Ongoing

Project

Risky Cities: Living with water in an uncertain future climate

Funder

AHRC Arts & Humanities Research Council

Grant

£333,903.00

Started

1 August 2020

Status

Complete

Project

On the Edge: a co-created exploration of young people’s eco-anxiety in the face of climate uncertainty

Funder

NERC Natural Environment Research Council

Grant

£10,000.00

Started

1 July 2021

Status

Complete

Project

HEIF: Developing Effective University-Prison Partnership Policies: The Prisoner’s Perspective on the Educational Resources offered on in-cell TV at HMP Hull

Funder

00 University of Hull

Grant

£3,241.00

Started

1 January 2022

Status

Complete

Postgraduate supervision

Stewart is an interdisciplinary researcher with particular strengths in environmental approaches to English literature and a focus on the literature of flood risk regions across the North Sea.

He welcomes enquiries from potential research students (Masters and PhD) who wish to work on the following broad themes, in any period from 1400 onwards:

- Literature and environment (water and flood, estuary cultures, the green-blue humanities)

- Literature and disease (histories of malaria, plague, typhus)

Completed PhDs

I have supervised the following projects to successful completion in recent years:

- Jonathan Morton, Conventions are forever: the influence of Medieval romance narrative on female agency in the Bond film franchise (2023). External examiner, Professor James Chapman (Leicester).

- Rebecca Devine, Epistolary Larkin: Letters, Life, and the Literary Biography (2022). External examiner, Professor Richard Bradford (Ulster)

- Louise Powell, The Crisis of Masculinity: Twins, Early Modern Medicine, and Drama, 1594-1655 (2018).

- Kaylara Ann Reed, Writing Reform in 14th-century English Romance (2017). External examiner, Professor Raluca Radulescu (Bangor).

- Amy Albudri, Phantasmal Morgans and Other Women (2016). External examiner, Dr Rob Gossedge (Cardiff).

Current PhD supervisions

I currently act as first supervisor for the following six PhD projects:

Helen Keighley: Performing Heritage: Processes of Narrative Creation at Heritage Visitor Attractions

Bethany Lettington: Creature and Community: Water Mythology in Poetry of the British Isles from Early Modern to Present Day

Xin Lim: Water as a Frontier: Environmental Colonialism and Native American Resistance in Early Modern Virginia

Mary Rehman: ‘Shut up’: Pandemic Lockdowns and Health Inequalities, 1600 to present day

Anna Stevenson: Ted Hughes’ Mythic Poets: Reflections on the Inner Self and Divine Power

Felicity Wood: English Literature, Water, Health, and Wellbeing in Estuary Communities, 1500-1700

Membership/Fellowship of professional body

Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA)

2015

Research assessment service

Member of the AHRC Peer Review College

2020

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