Office hours
My office hours for 2024/25 can be booked using the link below. My office is Queens 311, but if you would prefer to meet over Teams do let me know. OFFICE HOURS BOOKING FORM
Professor John Plunkett (he/him)
Associate Professor
English and Creative Writing
My research mainly concerns nineteenth-century visual media; I have a particular interest in the visual shows and devices that so fascinated audiences during this period, including panoramas, dioramas, 3-D photography, peepshows, magic lantern, kaleidoscopes and transparencies. I have held grants from the AHRC, Leverhulme Trust and Yale Centre for British Art to support my research. Much of my work at Exeter draws on the rich resources of the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, a public museum and research centre covering the long history of the moving-image. More broadly, I am also interested in the way that media technologies during the Victorian period have links to contemporary culture and digital media. As well as visual shows, I have published broadly on nineteenth-century print media, celebrity and popular culture. I am a member of the Centre for Victorian Studies at Exeter, which brings together the large number fo researchers we have working in the area. Follow our Twitter account for the latest Victorian news.
I am also dedicated to encouraging public engagement and understanding of my research: I have worked with the choreographer Lea Andersons and have been involved with public collaborations and events with Kensington Palace, RAMM, Ilfracombe Museum, Positive Lights Community Arts (Exeter), and the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum.
Research supervision: I am interested in supervising students in most areas of 19th c literature, media, art and culture (see list of PhD students for current projects supervised). Previous PhD students who have gone on to publish their theses include:
Alice Barnaby, Light Touches: Cultural Practices of Illumination, 1800-1900 (Routledge, 2016)
Matt Hayler, Challenging the Phenomena of Technology (Palgrave 2015)
