Ryan Sweet

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College: College of Humanities
Discipline: English
Department: English
Research Centre/Unit: Centre for Victorian Studies/Centre for Medical History

Having completed my BA in English at the Tremough Campus in 2011, I carried on at Exeter to study for an MA in Victorian Studies. During my BA I developed an interest in Victorian sensation fiction and disability studies, which led me to write a dissertation on the representation of disability in the oeuvre of Wilkie Collins. While studying for my masters degree, my interest in the portrayal of disability in nineteenth-century fiction developed, and I eventually wrote my dissertation on the cultural and literary history of ocular prosthesis from 1838 to 1904. Meanwhile, I successfully applied for AHRC funding for my current PhD project that explores not only the representations of artificial eyes but also the portrayal of other forms of human prosthesis (including wooden legs, artificial arms, dentures, and wigs) in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction. In addition to my research, I am the Managing Editor for the academic journal Literature & History, which is published biannually by Manchester University Press. I am also a contributor to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded project Nineteenth-Century Disability: Cultures and Contexts, which is curated and edited by Dr Karen Bourrier (University of Calgary). In 2015 I co-organised (alongside Betsy Lewis-Holmes) the events Exewhirr: A Workshop for Arts and Academics on the Human-Machine Relationship and the Postgraduate Medical Humanities Conference 2015.