Nigel supervises PhD students in three main fields: modernist/postmodernist, postcolonial and contemporary fiction; Russian literature and film; and the history of Anglo-Hungarian cultural contacts. He is very happy to be contacted by prospective students, especially those who can see themselves contributing to the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories.
Specific areas of literary analysis might include:
Modernist, Postmodern, Postcolonial, and Contemporary Fiction
- The influence of cultural, anthropological, and shamanic forces on human psychology: the psychogeographic impact of Aztec and Zapotec civilizations on Malcolm Lowry
- The Mexican Day of the Dead: anthropological, cosmic, and shamanic perspectives
- Alienation, survival, and regeneration in Toni Morrison
- Verbal and non-verbal identity in J. M. Coetzee
- The representation of cultural identities and memory
The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Culture
- The influence of socio-political alienation on human psychology in the works of A. P. Chekhov, M. Yu. Lermontov, and A. S. Pushkin
History of Anglo-Hungarian Cultural Contacts
- British visitors to Hungary and Hungarian travellers to the British Isles in the early modern period onwards
- British attitudes and perceptions of Hungary (and vice-versa) and their reflection in the genre of travel writing
PhD Students Supervised:聽
Nabila Ahsan, The Representation of Young Adult Women in Angela Carter鈥檚 Work
Elisa Gray, Decadence and the Grotesque Body: The Effects of Decadent Literature on Female Identity in the Late 1800's
Piamaria von Konow, A Study of the Shamanically-Inspired Imaginary: A Cross-Cultural Study of Shamanic/Shamanistic Imagery
Mayukh Saha, The Representation of Transnationalism and Diasporic Cognition in Selected Literature of West Bengal and Bangladesh
Joy Xin, Observing the City via Novel and Film
Ana Zivkovic-Snowley, Constructions of Montenegro in the Works of British Authors from the Nineteenth Century to the Present