This provides an opportunity to conduct research into the ways in which women are represented in historical fictions and biofictional novels and films set in the period of the English Civil Wars (1642-1651). Often stories set in those time focus on men and battles, but an increasing number of recent novels tell the story from the point of view of women who lived through this era of social upheaval too. The research would investigate how female figures are portrayed in modern historical and/or biofictional novels and what this might mean more broadly in terms of recovering women’s voices from history. How do literary or dramatic articulations of women in the civil war era intervene in dominant understandings of the roles of women at the time? How can fiction help to diversify the ways in which the era of the wars and interregnum are viewed? How does the aesthetic form/style of a cultural work contribute to its communication of the lived of women in this era? How can contemporary life writings (letters, journals, and diaries) be best used to inspire creative responses that would engage a modern readership?

These and other questions might form part of a creative/ critical PhD project on this subject. We would welcome proposals focused on individual historical figures or events, or comparative studies of the writings in a particular genre (religious, domestic, etc). These would underpin the main output of the doctoral research which would be a research-led historical / biofictional novel which would seek to answer some of these questions and others in a creative and engaging way.