Introducing the 2024-25 Editors

Co-Editors of the KCL English Department’s Blog Katherine Randall and Isabella Mann introduce themselves and invite submissions.

We are back for the new academic year and raring to go! This year, Katherine Randall and Isabella Mann will be editing the blog and managing the department’s social media.

We are thrilled to be working with the English department to keep you updated on all things King’s English. We would like to recognize the work of previous editors in curating this space. A big thank you to Alexander Giesen and Felix Antelme (2023-2024), Samantha Seto and Alexander Giesen (2022-2023), George Kowalik and Graham Fifoot (2021-2022), Katie Arthur and Harriet Thompson (2019-2021), Fran Allfrey and Diya Gupta (2017-2019), and Founding Editors Penny Newell and Ella Parry-Davies (2016-2017).

We invite anyone interested, from first-years to tenured professors, to submit blog posts of up to 2,000 words. Blogs can range from short reviews or reflective pieces to longer-form conversations and interviews, as well as pieces on research at any level.

If you are interested in contributing or have any other questions, please get in touch with us via the blog’s email address: blog.english.kcl@gmail.com.

The Editors:

Katherine: I am a fourth-year, part-time, LAHP-funded PhD student in the English Department at King’s College London. I have a background in early modern studies, having completed my MA in Shakespeare and Creativity at the Shakespeare Institute and my BA (Hons) in English at Queen’s University Belfast. My research (supervised by Professor Lucy Munro and Dr. Sarah Lewis) focuses on the impact of early modern institutions—specifically apprenticeship, education, and the family—on the developing selfhood, agency, and identity of children.

My research interests include:

  • Early modern concepts of freedom and the self
  • Early modern theatre and performance history
  • Boy actors, impressment, and childhood studies
  • Service, apprenticeship, humanistic education, and actor training

Previously, I have edited work for Ad Alta: The Birmingham Journal of Literature and Language, and I teach on the Early Modern Literary Culture module at King’s.

I am hugely excited to receive submissions covering a range of topics from across the department.

Isabella: I am a third-year, full-time PhD student in the English Department at King’s College London. My research (supervised by Dr. Emrys Jones) investigates the literary representation of tactile encounters with miniature objects in Eighteenth-century Britain with a focus on tactility and tenderness. I was awarded my BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford in 2021 and completed my MA in Eighteenth Century Studies at King’s College London in 2022. My research interests include:

  • Miniature things and small-scale objects in eighteenth-century literature
  • Tactility and haptics in eighteenth-century literature and culture
  • History of emotion
  • Epistemology and scientific instruments in the long eighteenth century

I have taught in both the English Department and Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at King’s College London and am also the Student Representative for Postgraduate Researchers in the English Department.

I very much look forward to working with Katherine to commission blog posts and warmly welcome submissions on any topic you may like to write about.

Editorial Team,

Dept of English Blog,

King’s College London

Katherine.randall@kcl.ac.uk

Isabella.mann@kcl.ac.uk

https://twitter.com/kingsenglishdpt?lang=en

Blog posts on King’s English represent the views of the individual authors and neither those of the English Department, nor of King’s College London.