English Literature and creative writing research

Community Partnerships

Public engagement is at the core of research in English Literature and Creative Writing. This includes public dissemination of research at literary festivals including the Huddersfield Literature Festival (now in its tenth year), SciFest Yorkshire, and the Bradford and Ilkley Literature festivals, to name but a few.

Academic staff have also worked with curators at the Tolson Museum, Huddersfield, to deliver a series of integrated talks and exhibitions of artefacts that explore the intersections between literature and material culture on such topics as war, marriage, animal remains, ecological awareness, science fiction, the poetry of things and the Cottingley Fairies hoax. Public engagement is about dialogue, however, and this is reflected in the ways in which the work of academic staff in the subject area is informing the work of organisations such as First Story, the Canal and River Trust, the South Yorkshire Ted Hughes Project, Bradford Museums and Galleries, and the Elmet Trust. The subject area also hosts an annual J.B. Priestley lecture series in which an eminent figure in contemporary literature is invited to deliver a topical lecture on the intersection of literature, politics and society.

SciFest Yorkshire

SciFest Yorkshire is a brand new science-fiction festival organised by Kirklees Libraries, Kirklees Museums and Galleries, and the University of Huddersfield. Sci-Fest Yorkshire 2015 included talks by SF authors such as Justina Robson, lectures on H.G. Wells (Merrick Burrow and of the University of Huddersfield) and Doctor Who (author and scriptwriter Mark Wright) and a range of workshops, competitions and other events. Held in venues across Huddersfield, this festival celebrates sci-fi and its creators across a range of media.

Ted Hughes Project

Steve Ely is Chair of the Ted Hughes Project (South Yorkshire), a community-based organisation that organises the annual Ted Hughes Poetry Festival in Mexborough, the town where Hughes spent his most formative years and became a poet.  The THP(SY) is also developing a ‘Ted Hughes Trail’ in and around the town and organises creative writing and other arts events.

Canal & River Trust

We have an important and valuable research link with the museums of the Canal & River Trust, the national charity entrusted with caring for 2,000 miles of waterways in England and Wales. Jodie Matthews has been working with the Trust based on her work on the representation of canal boat people, and to date they have collaborated on funding bids, established a waterways academic research network, and Jodie has been consulted on the Trust’s revamp of the Waterways Museum in Gloucester.

The Elmet Trust

The Elmet Trust is a local charity which celebrates the life and work of the late poet laureate Ted Hughes, and looks after his birthplace - a modest house in the nearby town of Mytholmroyd. The University has close links with the Trust's annual Ted Hughes festival, and runs numerous events jointly with the Elmet Trust.

J B Priestley lectures

J.B. Priestley - one of Yorkshire's finest writers - was born in Bradford in 1894, and died in 1984. In his honour, and with the participation of the J.B. Priestley estate, the University of Huddersfield hosts an annual J.B. Priestley lecture, given by a leading writer of international renown. Following in the tradition of Priestley himself, the authors giving these lectures are selected not only for their literary credentials, but for making literature a vehicle for social and political comment, and for finding new ways of engaging the public in their writing.

The Brontë Stones Project

The University is collaborating with Bradford Literature Festival on an exciting new project called The Brontë Stones.

Creative Writing Course Leader, Dr Michael Stewart, has been awarded a grant of £28,000 for his Brontë Stones project in collaboration with the Bradford Literature Festival. The project will include the placing of stones in the landscape between the birthplace of the Brontës in Thornton and the parsonage where they grew up in Haworth to celebrate the bicentenaries of the three sisters: Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Three contemporary female writers will be commissioned to write for the stones and this text will be carved into the stones. A series of walks incorporating the stones will be devised and a guide book published. The project includes a number of innovative literary events.