The Writers of Wales Database

WILLIS, MARTIN

Martin is Reader in English Literature at the University of Glamorgan, where he has lectured since 2003, having previously taught at the Universities of Edinburgh and Worcester. He teaches nineteenth century literature, as well as American literature and crime fiction. Martin’s main research interests include the intersections between Victorian literature and science, particularly the literary imagination’s response to marginal sciences such as mesmerism and spiritualism, and by literature’s interrogation of scientific sites and conflicts from the laboratory and séance room to debates in disease theory and vivisection controversies.

He is currently working on a book entitled Hoodwinked: The Power of Vision in Victorian Literature and Science. It is an interdisciplinary study of literature, science, and culture in the Victorian period which focuses on the changing nature of vision as engineered by scientific discovery. Martin has been widely published in anthologies and journals including Victorian Review and Journal of Victorian Culture. He holds the Editorship of the Journal of Literature and Science and is Co-Director of the Glamorgan Research Centre for Literature, Arts, and Science. He is also Membership Secretary for the British Society for Literature and Science, Organiser and Chair of the BAVS-funded Victorian Studies Seminar in Wales, Member of the Committee for the Gladstone Centre for Victorian Studies and a Member of the British Association for Victorian Studies.

Selected Publications:
Mesmerists, Monsters and Machines: Science Fiction and the Cultures of Science in the Nineteenth Century (Kent State University Press, 2006)

Contributed to:
The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader (contributor) (Manchester University Press, 2003)
Repositioning Victorian Sciences Shifting Centres in Nineteenth-Century Scientific Thinking (co-editor) (Anthem Press, 2006)
Victorian Literary Mesmerism (co-editor) (Rodopi Press, 2006)
Jack the Ripper: Media, Culture, History (co-editor) (Manchester University Press, 2007)
Literature and Science: Essays and Studies (contributor) (Boydell and Brewer, 2008)
The Victorian Literature Handbook (co-editor) (Continuum Press, 2008)