People within English Language and Literature

Professor Richard Bradford

Professor of Literary History & Theory

Richard Bradford is Professor of English and Senior Distinguished Research Fellow. His work on poetry and poetics has been praised by John Hollander and René Wellek as offering new, groundbreaking perspectives upon the nature of verse.

His biographies of post-war British writers have received enthusiastic reviews in broadsheets and weeklies, with D.J. Taylor in The Independent commenting on his 'Lucky Him. The Life of Kingsley Amis' (2001) that 'no-one has done such a detailed job of analysis... No-one, either, has so relentlessly exposed the central struggles of Amis's life'.

Roger Lewis, in the Daily Express wrote of 'First Boredom, Then Fear. The Life of Philip Larkin' (2005) that 'Bradford is in such complete command of the subject matter that nothing escapes him. It is as if he has had access to Larkin's very thought processes. A great biography of a great artistic genius. Utterly magnificent'.

He writes occasionally for The Spectator and has been commissioned as authorised biographer of Alan Sillitoe.
Education

He did his BA in the University of Wales and his D.Phil. in Oxford and has held posts in the Universities of Oxford and Wales and in Trinity College Dublin. He was Visiting Lecturer in Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest and in the University of Warsaw.

Since his arrival at Ulster University he has published 15 books on various aspects of literature and culture from the Renaissance to the present day, including A Linguistic History of English Poetry (Routledge, 1993); Roman Jakobson. Life, Language, Art (Routledge, 1994); The Look of It. A Theory of Visual Form in English Poetry (Cork University Press, 1993); and Stylistics (Routledge, 1997).

Dr Stephen Butler

Lecturer in English (Modern Fiction)

Dr Katherine Byrne

Senior Lecturer

Dr Kevin De Ornellas

Lecturer in English

Kevin De Ornellas holds a PhD in English Renaissance Literature from Queen's University Belfast. He has lectured at Ulster since 2006.

Research Fields

Kevin specialises in the study of drama on stage and on the page - especially Renaissance and post-War drama. He is also interested in the study of representations of animals and the environment in literature and culture.

Dr Tim Hancock

Lecturer in English Literature

Dr Hancock has taught English at Coleraine since 1998, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. He specialises in poetry and modern literature, coordinating and lecturing on the final year core module of the BA (Hons) English degree ('Twentieth-Century Literature').

Dr Hancock has fulfilled many roles in his time at Ulster, including Course Director for the BA and Head of Subject for English. He has published on a number of twentieth century poets, including a study guide to the poetry of John Betjeman. He is presently researching towards a monograph on Betjeman and Love.

Education

2000: PGCUT Postgraduate Certificate in University Teaching, Ulster University
1997: PhD (Seamus Heaney), University of Cambridge
1992: MA (Distinction) Modern Literature: Theory & Practice, Leicester University
1988: BA Combined Arts (2.1): English Literature, Ancient History, Classical Studies

Research Fields

Twentieth Century Poetry, published on John Betjeman, Mina Loy, T.S. Eliot, Paul Muldoon, Robert Lowell, Seamus Heaney, Ciaran Carson. Love Poetry.

Professor Jan Jedrzejewski

Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Jan Jędrzejewski was educated at the University of Łódź, Poland, where he obtained, in 1985, his MA in English philology, and at Worcester College, University of Oxford, where he completed, in 1992, his DPhil on Thomas Hardy.

He joined Ulster University, as a Lecturer in English, in 1993; he was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2001, and he became a Professor of English and Comparative Literature in 2007. He held the posts of Acting Head of the Humanities Research Institute (2008-2009), Acting Head of the School of History and International Affairs (2009), Head of the School of English and History (2009-2014), and Dean of the Faculty of Arts (2014-2017).

A specialist in nineteenth-century English literature, particularly the Victorian novel, Professor Jędrzejewski also has a major interest in comparative literature, focusing on the literary relations between the British Isles and Poland. He has published monographs on Thomas Hardy and the Church (1996) and George Eliot (2007), and he has produced critical editions of Hardy and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, as well as numerous journal articles and book chapters.

Dr Andrew Keanie

Lecturer in English & History of the Irish Book

Andrew Keanie has taught English at Coleraine since 2002. He specialises in Romanticism, and coordinates and lectures on the module Romantics and Victorians (final year BA Hons) and other specialist optional modules.

He is currently final-year tutor and has published books and articles on S.T. Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge, De Quincey, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron and P.B. Shelley. 

Education

1996: BA English, University of Ulster 1999: PhD (Wordsworth), University of Ulster

Research Fields

Romanticism (with a current focus on De Quincey's life-writing, life habits and writing habits), plagiarism (again, with a focus at the moment on De Quincey), and the life and work of T.S. Eliot.

Dr Frank Sewell

Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Irish Literature in English

Dr Frank Sewell's PhD research into the poetry of Máirtín Ó Direáin, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Cathal Ó Searcaigh and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill was published as a monograph by Oxford University Press: Modern Irish Poetry: A New Alhambra (Oxford: OUP, 2000).

Since then he has continued to write chapters and essays on the 'dual tradition' of twentieth-century Irish poetry in both English and Irish, including studies of work by Gabriel Rosenstock and Ciaran Carson.

Other publications include translations of Irish poetry and short stories, Japanese poetry, and also original poetry. In addition Frank has edited several anthologies of contemporary writing.

Education

1998 PhD, Irish poetry, Ulster University; 1992 BA Hons 1st Class: English (major) & Russian (minor)

Research Fields

Poetry
Modern and contemporary writing in Irish
Bilingual writing in Ireland
Creative writing
Translation
International aspects of Irish Literature (esp. Russian / Slavonic links)

Dr James Ward

Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature

In addition to teaching widely across a range of periods and topics, James is primarily responsible for teaching eighteenth-century literature at Ulster University.

His research interests include Jonathan Swift, eighteenth-century Ireland, and the representation of the long eighteenth century in modern writing, art and screen media.

He has supervised postgraduate projects on a variety of topics including waste theory, the eighteenth-century Huguenot journalist, bookseller and publisher Jean-Pierre Droz, on David Hume and eighteenth-century fiction.

Dr Kathryn White

Associate Head of School of Arts & Humanities