• PhD in English Literature, De Montfort University (2007)
• Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice, University of Bedfordshire (2012)
• BA (Hons) in English and Cultural Studies, De Montfort University (1999)

I am the course coordinator for BA (Hons) English, BA (Hons) English Literature, and BA (Hons) Education Studies and English.

I am the unit coordinator for five units (modules) across the undergraduate English courses:

• Approaching Literature (year 1)
• Eighteenth Century Literature (year 2)
• Victorian Literature (year 2)
• Modern Irish Literature (year 3)
• Research in Action (year 3)
• Dissertation (year 3)

My research interests lie in authorship and cultural production in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, specifically the work of Elizabeth Bowen and Stella Benson. My work on Bowen has led to the co-founding and co-editorship of the peer reviewed, open access journal, the Elizabeth Bowen Review. This journal publishes work by established scholars, but also supports Early Career Researchers and PhD students to publish their work. I also co-founded, and co-chair, the Elizabeth Bowen Society, which promotes Bowen scholarship.

Research Supervision

• Director of Studies – PhD student: The Practice of Absurdity
• Director of Studies of MPhil/PhD student: Representations of Trauma in Young Adult Literature
• Director of Studies of PhD student: A Place Amongst the Galaxy of Roses: Gender, Sexuality and Flaneurie in the Poetry of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
• Director of Studies of PhD student: Gender Subversion, Sexual Deviancy and the Other in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (viva passed with minor corrections January 2023)
• Director of Studies of PhD student: Hockliffe Collection: Representations of Punishment in Nineteenth Century Stories for Children (viva passed with minor corrections February 2019 - degree awarded July 2019)
• Director of Studies of MA (Research) student: Desire in the fiction of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (degree awarded in March 2014)
• Second supervisor of PhD student: From Monmouth to Merlin: The evolution and stasis of gender representations in the Arthurian myth (viva passed with minor corrections July 2015 - degree awarded November 2015)

I also examine research degrees, and chair vivas for both PhD and MA (Res).

I welcome applicants for PhD, MPhil , MA (Res) study or collaborative research projects in the fields of late nineteenth/early twentieth century literature, book history, literary history and the literature of Bedfordshire.

• 2023. (with Alexis Weedon) 'In Hearing Pleasing Things Retold' in Cinderella (programme note for the Royal Ballet's production of Cinderella at the Royal Opera House).
• 2022. 'Sometimes I pose, but sometimes I pose as posing': Stella Benson's early fiction' in Kane, Louise (ed) Re-Reading the Age of Innovation: Victorians, Moderns, and Literary Newness, 1830–1950 (London: Routledge).
• 2022. ''OHO, WHAT NEXT? …' ~ Stella Benson: editor' in Benson, Stella and Brad Bigelow (ed) Pull Devil, Pull Baker (Norwich: Boiler House Press).
• 2020. 'Nancy Spain's Cinderella goes to the Morgue, An Entertainment' in Darwood N and Alexis Weedon (eds). Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
• 2020. Edited with Alexis Weedon. Retelling Cinderella: Cultural and Creative Transformations. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
• 2020. 'Flying Dangerously: Elizabeth Bowen's To the North' in McCluskey, Michael & Luke Seaber (eds). Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan)
• 2020. Edited with W R Owens and Alexis Weedon. Fiction and the 'Woman Question' 1850-1930. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
• 2020. 'The making of a suffragette: Stella Benson and I Pose (1915)' in Darwood, Nicola, W R Owens and Alexis Weedon (eds). Fiction and the 'Woman Question' 1850-1930. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.103-122).
• 2020. Edited with Nick Turner. Interwar Women's Comic Fiction: 'Have Women a Sense of Humour?' (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
• 2020. 'Laughter and dying: Stella Benson's Hope Against Hope and Other Stories and Tobit Transplanted' in Darwood, Nicola and Turner, Nick (eds) Interwar Women's Comic Fiction: 'Have Women a Sense of Humour?' (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.63-82).
• 2012. A World of Lost Innocence: The fiction of Elizabeth Bowen. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publications
• 2010. 'Eviction from Eden: The Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen' in The Glass, No.22, Spring 2010, pp.41-49.
• 2009. 'Empty Boxes, Empty Spaces: Elizabeth Bowen's The Little Girls' in McNair, A and Ryder, J (eds) in Further From the Frontiers: Crosscurrents in Irish and Scottish Studies. Aberdeen: AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies, pp. 11-20.

Co-editor (with Nick Turner) The Elizabeth Bowen Review (co-edited with Nick Turner):

• volume 5, April 2023.
• volume 4, September 2021.
• volume 3, September 2020.
• volume 2, September 2019.
• volume 1, May 2018. www.bowensociety.com/elizabeth-bowen-review

Invited talks/contributions:

• 'Great Grey Boxes: Elizabeth Bowen and the 'Big House' - invited address for the Swiss Centre of Irish Studies at the University of Zurich, October 2024.
• ‘Encountering Elizabeth Bowen: the Farahy Address’ – invited address for the annual Elizabeth Bowen commemoration service, Farahy Church, Farahy, County Cork, Ireland, September 2023.
• Invited presentation: University of Buckingham, ‘From the archive to the page: the labyrinthine nature of a research journey (featuring Cinderella, Nancy Spain, Elizabeth Bowen and Stella Benson)’, 27^th October 2021.
• Podcast: Darwood, N. (30%), Royle, N., and Hepburn, A. 2021. ‘Elizabeth Bowen Podcast’ with the Iris Murdoch Society and Miles Leeson
• Radio: contribution to an episode of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour to talk about the Cinderella myth, 26^th November 2021.

Select conference papers:

• 'This may not reach you ...': letters as a location of narrative in Elizabeth Bowen’s fiction - Locating Elizabeth Bowen, University of Bedfordshire, May 2024.
• ‘‘Virtue and Vice; or, Tales from the Hockliffe Collection’ – BERA conference, University of Bedfordshire, June 2023.
• ‘‘A changeling lover [… and a] changeling son’: Stella Benson’s Goodbye, Stranger’ – From Brontë to Bloomsbury Fifth International Conference: Reassessing Women's Writing of the 1920s and 1930s – Fifth International Conference 1920s and 1930s ICVWW Conference Canterbury Christ Church University, July 2018
• ‘Politics and “the Woman Question” in Mary Cholmondeley’s Red Pottage (1899) and Stella Benson’s I Pose (1915) – Literature and the ‘Woman Question’, University of Bedfordshire, June 2018
• ‘Telling stories: the diaries of Stella Benson’ - Creative Practice Research Conference in the Age of the Neo-liberalism, University of Bedfordshire, May 2018
• ‘[W]hat a small gift it was’: Stella Benson and I Pose (1915) - English: Shared Futures, Newcastle July 2017
• ‘Enter a murderer: Nancy Spain’s Cinderella goes to the Morgue’ - All about Cinderella: retellings in the cultural imagination, University of Bedfordshire, June 2017
• ‘No one is incapable of boiling a kettle’: Reviewing Eva Trout, or Changing Scenes - Elizabeth Bowen: a re-evaluation, University of Bedfordshire, May 2017

• Co-organiser - Locating Elizabeth Bowen - University of Bedfordshire, May 2024
• Co-organiser - Elizabeth Bowen: Blurred Boundaries - University of Bedfordshire, June 2019
• Co-organiser - The Mark Rutherford Symposium: Literature and 'The Woman Question' - University of Bedfordshire, June 2018.
• Co-organiser - Elizabeth Bowen: a reevaluation, University of Bedfordshire, May 2017
• Convenor - All about Cinderella: retellings in the cultural imagination, University of Bedfordshire, June 2017

• Member of the Executive Committee of University English
• External examiner (2020-2024) Leeds Trinity University: BA (Hons) English and Film; BA (Hons) English and Media; BA (Hons) English Literature
• Co-chair of the Elizabeth Bowen Society and co-editor of The Elizabeth Bowen Review, an open access, peer reviewed journal.
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
• Member of the Literature Advisory Board for Cambridge Scholars Publishing
• Occasional reviewer for: Trent editions, English, Routledge and Victorian Studies.

T: +44 (0)1234 793106
E: nicola.darwood@beds.ac.uk

• Twitter: @bedsenglish and @nicdarwood
• Facebook: @bedsenglish
• ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0506-4380