Academic Agony Aunts

Christine Chettle
PhD Student, English

Christine Chettle completed her undergraduate degree at Queen’s University in Canada and is now a PhD student at the University of Leeds.  She is interested in aesthetics and social debate in the Victorian period and in links between Victorian modes of fantasy and realism. Her thesis investigates these issues in texts by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and George MacDonald, and she explores them in a forthcoming article on fairy-tale and disability in texts by Charles Dickens.  Christine has also done work on writers such as Ernest Jones, Christina Rossetti, and Lucy Maud Montgomery and will be presenting at an international conference on Harry Potter at the University of St Andrews in May.  In addition, Christine is active in promoting links between the academy and the wider community, particularly through assisting the Leeds Centre for Canadian Studies with recruitment, event organization and the development of funding initiatives, and through a project teaming postgraduate researchers with creative and cultural industries.

Martin Vacek
MA by Research, Philosophy
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/site/custom_scripts/people_profile_details.php?profileID=1433 

Elizabeth Ward
PhD student, German
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/people/20054/german/person/1416/elizabeth_ward