Professor Kirsty Martin

Kirsty Martin's research concerns literature, emotion, and medicine, and the environment.

Her first book Modernism and the Rhythms of Sympathy: Vernon Lee, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, was published by Oxford University Press in 2013. Her new book, Writing Happiness, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2026.

Biography:

I grew up in Northampton, and went to Northampton High School For Girls. I then studied as an undergraduate and a postgraduate at the University of Oxford, gaining my first degree from Pembroke College before going on to complete my M St and D Phil at Linacre College. In 2009 I was elected to a (non-stipendiary)Junior Research Fellowship at Linacre College. From 2007 onwards I taught for a range of Oxford colleges and visiting student schemes, and in 2011-2012 I held a teaching lectureship at Christ Church, Oxford. I joined Exeter in September 2012, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2017, and Associate Professor in 2025.

Research supervision:

I very much enjoy supervising research students, and in 2016 received the Students' Guild Award for 'Best Research Supervisor'.

I would be interested in supervising research students in the following areas:

• Modernism
• My key author interests, including: Vernon Lee, Elizabeth von Arnim, Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, T. S. Eliot, Iris Murdoch, George Eliot, Zadie Smith, Ali Smith
• Literature and emotion
• Literaure and medicine

Please do feel free to email me with enquiries.