Deirdre Coleman appointed Robert Wallace Chair
Professor Deirdre Coleman has recently been appointed as the Robert Wallace Chair of English.
Deirdre studied English at the University of Melbourne before going to Oxford University in 1976. Supported overseas by a University of Melbourne Rae and Edith Bennett Travelling Scholarship, she graduated with a BPhil (1979) in Victorian literature and a DPhil (1986) on Coleridge’s political and literary newspaper ‘The Friend’ (1809-1810). Since returning to Australia she has taught at the Universities of Wollongong, Adelaide and Sydney. In 2001 she was awarded the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research Supervision at the University of Sydney.
Her research interests include 18th and 19th century literature, science, and cultural history; abolitionism, women's writing, travel, colonialism, natural history, racial ideology, the gothic. Her current research, funded by the Australian Research Council, encompasses a Discovery project ‘Insect Societies and Social Butterflies: Natural History and Sociability in the Romantic period’ and two Linkage projects, ‘Minds, Bodies, Machines: a cultural and intellectual history of technologies in the 21st century’ and (with Professors Iain McCalman and John Chappell) ‘Seeing Change: Science, Culture and Technology in the antipodes from the age of Darwin—a multi-media research collaboration’. Recent publications include a chapter ‘Jane Austen and Empire’ for a new Blackwell Companion to Jane Austen edited Claudia Johnson and Clara Tuite, and a journal article ‘Henry Smeathman and the natural economy of slavery’ in Essays and Studies.