Professor Corinna Wagner

All of my projects involve text and image, and crosses disciplines and genres.

I work in the environmental humanities, combining creative and critical practice. I am currently working on traditional and experimental photography, and on handmade photo poetry books. This work will feature in exhibitions in 2022-23: 'Unstable Ground' (Studio KIND, Braunton, Devon 13 August - 3 September; 'Above and Below' (Artizan Collective Gallery, Torquay, Devon); 'Corinna Wagner: TerraOceanus' at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, Devon, 17 June - 12 August, 2023

This work has grown out of, and is a part of larger public-facing projects on water and climate change, coasts and culture. It is supported by a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant to work with the Tide and Time Bell Project, an art initiative that concerns coastal communities and rising sea levels and centres around bells designed by artist Marcus Vergette. See this fascinating and important work here: Home - Time and Tide Bell

The form of much of my current work could be described as illustrated creative non-fiction or illustrated autotheory, some of the elements of which can be seen on this website. I am, for instance, completing a photobook, Blue Ruin, which combines digital, traditional and alternative photography (including cyanotype) and writing about ruins, ruin-making, the exploration of ruins, and notions of property and trespass. A body of images titled Tourism and a photo essay on ruins and 'CoronaGothic' in Critical Quarterly provides a taste of this work. I am completing a book of prose poetry, which also has 'blue' in the title: some of the images and first lines from Anatomy of Blue can be seen here.

Speaking of anatomy, my most recent book is on art and anatomy, a topic I have been publishing on and speaking about for some time. A highly illustrated book, Still Life, which covers an array of topics on the long history of the intersections between the visual and literary arts and anatomy, will be published very soon. An article called 'Replicating Venus: Art, Anatomy, Wax Models and Automata' can be accessed here. Some of this work formed the basis for an appearance on Channel 4's Bone Detectives, which can be watched here. This interest was first sparked while researching my first book, Pathological Bodies.

I took a somewhat unconventional path to academia. I had a life on the road, working as a journalist among other exciting things, for a few years after high school in Canada. After some years of travel, I decided it was time to get a degree in journalism and photography, but before I did I got hooked on literature. I obtained an honours BA and a fully funded MA from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada and a DPhil from the University of York, funded by the Overseas Research Students Award Scheme (ORSAS, Universities UK), a University fellowship, and SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Canada).

Before I finished my PhD, I was appointed as lecturer at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. I wrote up my thesis in my first of two years there, and was promoted to Assistant Professor. I then took a position as lecturer at Exeter, where I am now Associate Professor in Literature and Visual Culture. I also completed a year of an MA at Plymouth Art College in Fine Art Photography.

My scholarly research and writing is closely connected to curatorial and creative work. I have co-curated exhibitions and I compose illustrated creative non-fiction, prose poetry, and autotheory. I am a photographer who works across digital, traditional and alternative processes, often incorporating wax, water and natural materials with photo-based media. The one commonality across all my work is the combination of text and image. This work can be seen on my website here. Recently, I've had creative work published in Climate Matters, here. This illustrated prose poem can be viewed on YouTube

I am more than happy to work with PhD candidates who work in visual culture, photography, and art history, from the 18th to the 20th centuries, medical humanities and body studies, gothic literature and Victorian medievalism, Romanticism, Victorian culture, environmentalism and blue humanities, the natural and the built environment, and ruins and ruinophilia, and other topics. I encourage especially candidates who are interested in working across genres and disciplines, or who combine text and image, or creative and critical practice.