Dr Samuel Solnick BA (Dublin), MA, PhD (London), PGCert (FHEA)

Personal Statement

My primary research interests are the Environmental Humanities, contemporary literature (especially poetry) and the relationships between literature and science. After teaching at Queen Mary and UCL, I joined the department as the William Noble Research Fellow in 2015 and was made a lecturer in 2017. I am Environmental Humanities co-lead for the University's Centre for Health, Medical and Environmental Humanities and I co-direct the Literature and Science Hub. My first monograph, Poetry and the Anthropocene, explores questions of ecology, biology and technology in contemporary British and Irish poetry, and was published by Routledge in 2017. I have published widely about literature, science and environment for both an academic and public-facing outlets including The Independent, Art Agenda, The Times Literary Supplement, RA Magazine, Newsweek and the BBC, and I am a contributing editor for the arts journal The White Review.

Current projects and interests include: the aesthetics of climate change across literature, performance and visual culture; energy humanities (particularly ‘petro-culture’); Liverpool in Literature; the literary history of sweetness (especially, but not only, in relation to sugar); apocalypse; and the intersections of health and ecology.

I welcome applications from prospective graduate students interested in working on any aspect of the Environmental Humanities (including fiction, poetry, performance, film and art) or post-1945 poetry.

My Academic Support and Feedback hours for the term are 4-5 Tuesdays and Thursdays in my office (3.09 19-23 Abercromby Square or MS Teams)

Funded Fellowships