My research focuses on the role and representation of communication media and technologies – especially letters, telegrams, and the postal service – in Victorian and early-twentieth-century writing. I have further research interests in the cultural history of sexual knowledge, in literary constructions of privacy from the Romantic period to the present, and in contemporary responses to and reinventions of the Victorian period. I would be pleased to supervise postgraduate research related to any of these subjects.

I hold an MA (Hons) in English and French (2011) and a PhD in Victorian Literature (2015) from the University of St Andrews. I joined Bangor University in 2016 as a lecturer in nineteenth-century British literature, having previously taught at St Andrews and for the Scottish Universities' International Summer School based at Edinburgh University.

My research and teaching focus on nineteenth-century literature, with particular emphasis on the relationships between literary culture and media, technologies, and infrastructures of communication.

Email: k.koehler@bangor.ac.uk

Phone: (0124838)2113

Location: Room 303, New Arts Building, College Road, Bangor University, LL57 2DG

I welcome PhD proposals in the following subject areas: Victorian literature and culture; Neo-Victorian literature; letters in literature and epistolary writing; media, networks, and technologies of communication in literature; infrastructure and literature; the life and work of Thomas Hardy.

I convene the following modules:

Year One:

QXE-1014: The Gothic in Literature/Film

Year Two:

QXE-2005: Victorian Literature

Year Three:

QXE-3109: Victorian Networks

QXE-3110: Neo-Victorian Fiction

MA:

QXE-4042: Revolution and Modernity, 1790-1930

I also contribute to QXE-1004 The Literature of Laughter, QXE-1013 Reading, Thinking, Writing, QXE-1015 Landmarks in Literature, QXE-1016 Children's Fiction, QXE-2020 The Romantic Period in Britain, QXE-2019 Contemporary Literatures, QXE-4050 Material Texts and Editing.

I have supervised undergraduate and MA dissertations on Victorian and Neo-Victorian literature and am supervising PhD research on nineteenth-century literary and publishing networks and Welsh Writing in English.

I would welcome PhD proposals in the following subject areas: Victorian literature and culture; Neo-Victorian literature; letters in literature and epistolary writing; media, networks, and technologies of communication in literature; infrastructure and literature; the life and work of Thomas Hardy. If you are a prospective doctoral researcher and not sure whether your project fits my expertise, please don't hesitate to contact me to discuss your proposal.

I'm currently the principal editor of a four-volume source book on nineteenth-century communication culture, forthcoming with Routledge. Nineteenth-Century Communications: A Documentary History, 1780-1918 seeks to help researchers navigate the overwhelming wealth of materials related to the development of communications and their political, economic, social, and cultural impacts. This research is supported by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust with a small grant.

I am also writing a book on poetic responses - in Welsh and English - to the transformation of the nineteenth-century postal service, exploring how literary culture made sense - and helped to shape - the experience of living in a networked world.

Building on my interest in communications, my research also explores the infrastructures (especially roads and bridges) that underpinned the increasingly faster transmission of messages. In particular, I have been working on the cultural reception in Welsh and English of the two bridges over the Menai. This research forms the beginning of a new project that takes a four nations approach to exploring the connections between the nineteenth-century bildungsroman and other discourses of development.

My first monograph, Thomas Hardy and Victorian Communication, was published by Palgrave in 2016. Related research on epistolary elements of novels and stories by Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Hardy, and Anthony Trollope has been published in Brontë Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture and Victorian Review, as well as in edited collections.

I have also written on the ways in which the plots and narrative form of literary texts refract changing attitudes toward sexual knowledge during the Victorian period. An essay about the significance of handwriting in Victorian fiction, periodicals, and graphology manuals has appeared in an edited collection about Judgement in the Victorian Age.

I am willing to supervise a PhD

2023

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2019

  • Interview with Aled Hughes on Radio Cymru

    An interview about new research into poetry and other writing about the bridges across the Menai.

    19 Nov 2019

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor)
  • 'Cables and Bridges: Connecting Wales in the Nineteenth Century'

    A talk as part of a series of lectures offered by the university to coincide with the first installment of the Winter Light event.

    16 Nov 2019

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Public lecture/debate/seminar (Contributor)
  • Dear Memory...

    Public workshop exploring the ways in which poetry can change our understanding of the relationship between place and memory.

    14 Nov 2019

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Public lecture/debate/seminar (Contributor)
  • 'A Tale of Two Bridges: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Victorian Literature'

    Lecture given as part of the Shankland Library Lecture series at Bangor University.

    6 Nov 2019

    Activity: Invited talk (Speaker)
  • 'not even knowledge takes all strangeness from the world': Knowing the Past in Sarah Perry's The Essex Serpent

    28 Aug 2019

    Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
  • Interview on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour

    Short interview, alongside actor Isabella Nefar, about Howard Brenton's play Jude (Hampstead Theatre), loosely based on Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure.

    9 May 2019

    Links:

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor)
  • Writing about Illness and Well-being in the Nineteenth Century

    One-day workshop for twenty KS4 students from the South West, organised in collaboration with Dr Catherine Charlwood (St Anne's College Oxford) and Mr Andrew Hewitt (Hull University), designed to support pupils' engagement with and understanding of nineteenth-century non-fiction and their interest in Thomas Hardy. The workshop was funded by the European Research Council-funded project 'Diseases of Modern Life', based at Oxford University, and supported by the Thomas Hardy Society.

    7 May 2019

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Schools engagement (Organiser)
  • The Mayor of Casterbridge at AS-Level: A Workshop

    Invited workshop for AS-level students at Ysgol Syr Hugh Owen, Caernarfon.

    3 May 2019

    Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Schools engagement (Speaker)
  • Welsh Crucible

    May 2019 – Jul 2019

    Activity: Participation in Academic workshop, seminar, course (Participant)
  • Engaging Students in Nineteenth-Century Prose

    The free workshop introduced resources designed to support the teaching and study of nineteenth-century non-fiction. It also explored strategies for using these resources and for drawing on Hardy Country heritage in the teaching of nineteenth-century non-fiction. A subsequent event for pupils, designed to support their engagement with nineteenth-century non-fiction, took place on 7 May 2019.

    12 Apr 2019

    Activity: Participation in Academic workshop, seminar, course (Organiser)

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