English staff

Professor Andrew Kehoe

Professor of Corpus Linguistics

Andrew Kehoe is Professor of Corpus Linguistics and REF Unit of Assessment Lead for English (UoA27). He has qualifications in both English and Computer Science, and has for over 20 years worked on a series of UKRI-funded projects in the field of Corpus Linguistics: the automated analysis of patterns and trends in large text...

Dr Robert Lawson

Associate Professor

Dr Robert Lawson completed his ESRC-funded PhD thesis at the University of Glasgow in 2009, focusing on urban adolescent language use in a high school in Glasgow. Since joining Birmingham City University, Dr Lawson has expanded his focus to encompass research on language in the media, language and masculinities, and the...

Professor Gregory Leadbetter

Professor of Poetry, Course Director of the MA in Creative Writing, Director of the Institute of Creative and Critical Writing

Professor Gregory Leadbetter is a poet and critic. His research focuses on Romantic poetry and thought, the traditions to which these relate, and the history and practice of poetry more generally. He is the author of two poetry collections, Maskwork (2020) and The Fetch (2016), both with Nine Arches Press, as well...

Dr Gemma Moss

Reader in Modern and Contemporary Literature

Before joining BCU, Gemma taught at the University of Salford and the University of Manchester, where she completed an MA in Postcolonial Literature and an AHRC-funded PhD. Gemma is author of Modernism, Music and the Politics of Aesthetics (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). She is currently editing E. M. Forster’s first...

Professor Antoinette Renouf

Emeritus Professor of English Language and Linguistics

Antoinette Renouf holds degrees from the Universities of East Anglia and Essex. Her research interests include lexis and lexical semantics, with particular focus on the relationship between textual word patterning and meaning; and automated text analysis for application in document retrieval and knowledge management. She is...

Professor David Roberts

Professor of English

David's research interests are in theatre and the history and practice of life writing. Publications include monographs for Oxford University Press, Methuen, Palgrave, and Cambridge University Press. He has also worked on major editions of classic texts, most recently of Congreve's The Way of the World (Methuen, 2020) and...

Professor Philip Smallwood

Emeritus Professor of English

Philip Smallwood, BA (Oxon), M.Phil (Oxon), Ph.D. (London), is Emeritus Professor of English at Birmingham City University and at different times Honorary Visiting Fellow and Honorary Senior Teaching Associate in the Department of English, Bristol University. His teaching and research interests are in the late seventeenth and...

Dr Serena Trowbridge

Reader in Victorian Literature

Dr. Serena Trowbridge read English and Art History at King's College London, followed by an MA in textual studies at the University of Birmingham. Her PhD, entitled 'Christina Rossetti's Fractured Gothic', was completed at Birmingham City University in 2010, supervised by Professor Fiona Robertson. Her monograph Christina...

Demi Wilton

Lecturer in English Literature

Demi is a Lecturer in English Literature in BCU’s School of English. Before beginning this role in 2024, Demi held positions as a Research Associate on the AHRC-funded project ‘Novel Perceptions: Towards an Inclusive Canon’ and Loughborough University’s ‘Women and the Making of James Joyce’s Ulysses’. Demi was awarded her PhD...

Dr Sarah Wood

Head of English and Media

Sarah Wood holds degrees from JMU, the University of Liverpool, and Birmingham City University, where she gained her PhD. Her research interests are in feminism and science fiction. She has an article on Octavia Butler forthcoming in FEMSPEC and is working on further studies of Butler as well as of Nalo Hopkinson and slave...