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Once again, several members of the School of Culture will be taking part in the Sunderland Libraries Literature Festival (download the full programme here ). These events feature our staff/students: Colin Younger (Senior Lecturer): Expressive Writing as Therapy, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 10th October 3-4.30pm This workshop will explore expressive writing approaches to support mental health well-being as part of Mental Health Day. Dr Alison Younger (Senior Lecturer): Folklore and Fable in the North East, Houghton Library, 16th October 2-3pm This session will explore the extraordinary folklore and fables of North East England. Short Story Competition Launch , Waterstones, The Bridges, 16th October 5pm In association with Waterstones, the University of Sunderland will launch a Short Story Competition. Dr Geoff Nash (Senior Lecturer): The Gothic Terrorist: from Robespierre to Jihadi John City, Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 18th October 5-6.30pm Gothic, terroris

Heather Askwith Heather Askwith is a new Creative Writing PhD student in the School of Culture, under the supervision of Dr Sarah Dobbs . She is writing a novel called Resurrection Man as part of her thesis, which seeks to explore fears around the body from the Victorian Era and the parallels between this and contemporary fears. The novel will be set in two time periods and seeks to evoke the style of these periods as an exploration of narratology. In parallel with the writing of the novel, Heather will research the connections between gothic Victorian writing, modern horror writing and self-reflexive styles. She is interested in the development of horror fiction in response to developments in science and medicine. Her thesis seeks to explore the presentation of fears surrounding the body both in Victorian Gothic literature, and in contemporary modern texts, also considering a feminist angle and the presentation of female bodies.  Heather has been writing creatively for five years. Ha

Rosie Hordon-Clark (who has a BA and MA in English from the School of Culture) has been awarded a funded, 4-year PhD Scholarship from the School of English at Dublin City University , under the supervision of Dr Gearòid O'Flaherty. Rosie will explore the relationship between Angela Carter and feminism: to what extent can Angela Carter be identified as a feminist; what kind of a feminist was Carter; and what areas of her work are at odds with feminist thought? Her research will provide a chronological analysis of a selection of Carter's work, exploring the changes in feminist positions that Carter adopts in response to the ambiguities and complexities of Second-Wave feminism.

Professor Angela Smith has recently given a paper at the 3rd FoodKom International Conference , held in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  Angela considered the recent shift in food communication which has seen a rapid rise of the concept of 'clean eating' as an all-embracing notion of wellness. In the UK, the pioneers of clean eating have recently sought to distance themselves from this controversial area of cooking and lifestyle by rebranding themselves as purveyors of a more generic wellness agenda. Angela showed how the self-appointed clean-eating gurus who write the blogs and cookery books associated with the concept nevertheless seek to persuade us to exclude huge groups of food types and to 'get the glow'.

Leanne Smith receives her prize (Photo: Sunderland Echo) Leanne Smith, who graduated this summer with a First Class degree in history has won the annual Sid Chaplin Memorial Prize for the best undergraduate dissertation on North East history. Her study, entitled The Struggle Over Female Labour In The Durham Coalfield, 1914-1918 , examined how the Durham Mining Association (DMA) resisted pressure from colliery owners and the government to accept the introduction of female labour during the First World War. Leanne's research made use of the holdings of the university's North East England Mining Archive and Research Centre (NEEMARC) and her work will be published in the journal of the North East Labour History Society . You can read Leanne's interview in the Sunderland Echo here .

PhD student Patrick Low has taken on the role of Online Exhibition Creator for the University of Leicester's Harnessing the Power of the Criminal Corpse. This Wellcome Trust funded project e xplores the criminal corpse from the disciplines of archaeology, medical and criminal history, folklore, literature and philosophy, revealing the ways in which its power was harnessed, by whom, and to what ends in Britain between the late seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Patrick was approached by the project team after they had read his blog on execution in North East England: Last Dying Words . You can visit the website here .                                   William Heath (1829): Burke and Hare suffocating Mrs Docherty for sale to Dr Knox;                  satirizing Wellington and Peel extinguishing the constitution for Catholic emancipation.