Professor Claire Nally

Professor

School: Humanities and Social Sciences

I am a researcher in modern and contemporary literature, specifically Neo-Victorianism and Irish Studies. I am currently the Co-I on the Leverhulme Trust three-year funded project 'The Horror of Place-based Harms', with Dr Tom Disney (PI) and Dr Angelika Strohmayer (Co-I).

My first monograph was Envisioning Ireland: Occult Nationalism in the Work of W. B. Yeats (2009), followed by a second, co-written book (with John Strachan), entitled Advertising, Literature and Print Culture in Ireland, 1891-1922 (2012).

I have additional research interests in subcultures, the graphic novel, and gender, and this informed my third book, Steampunk: Gender, Subculture and the Neo-Victorian (2019), which is one of the first monographs on this topic in literature. I am also interested in the ways Neo-Victorianism functions as part of the (post)colonial encounter, with especial reference to Ireland.

I was the founding co-editor (with Angela Smith) of the Bloomsbury Library of Gender and Popular Culture (2011-2024) and I was the Deputy Editor (including Reviews) for the open access journal, C21 Literature (2019-2022).

I have published a wide range of articles and book chapters on material as diverse as contemporary Irish writing, heritage, Goth and burlesque. My latest research involves contemporary culture's engagement with memory, grief and mourning, and my fourth book, Death Memoirs in Contemporary Culture, is under contract with Bloomsbury.

Campus Address

Squires Building 202B
School of Design, Arts, and Creative Industries
Northumbria University
NE4 8ST

Email Claire

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
The ‘style terrorism’ of Siouxsie Sioux: femininity, early goth aesthetics and BDSM fashion, Nally, C. 2023, 'Let's Spend the Night Together', Manchester, Manchester University Press
Rites and Rhymes, Nally, C. 21 Jun 2023, The Oxford Handbook of W. B. Yeats, Oxford, Oxford University Press
Afterword: The Value of ‘Gender’, Nally, C. 12 Mar 2026, Rewriting Gender in An Age of Transition, London, United Kingdom, Routledge
Irish Neo-Victorianism and An Gorta Mór: the Gendered Body in Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder (2016), Nally, C. 1 May 2024, Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism , Leiden, Netherlands, Brill Academic Publishers
Temporal Agonistics and Uchronia as Method in Annalee Newitz and Alastair Reynolds, Slocombe, W., Nally, C. 26 Feb 2026, In: Aura Revista
Neo-Victorian Experimental Narrative: Writing the Absent Objects of History in Affinity and In the Red Kitchen, Nally, C. 24 Jan 2021, Women Writers and Experimental Narratives, Cham, Switzerland, Palgrave Macmillan
'Death is not the End’: Thanatology Today, Nally, C. 1 Jan 2026, In: Contemporary European History
Editors’ introduction, Nally, C., Worley, M. 2024, In: Punk and Post-Punk

PGR Supervision

Lucy Swift Start Date: 01/10/2025 End Date: 17/10/2025
Emma Catan Cross-Dressing and ‘Transgression’ in the Neo-Victorian city Start Date: 01/10/2019
Emma Catan Cross-Dressing and ‘Transgression’ in the Neo-Victorian city Start Date: 01/10/2019 End Date: 17/10/2025
Lucy Swift The New Liminal: Hauntological Limbo, Uncertain Futures and the Elongated Present in Contemporary Fiction and Digital Art Start Date: 01/10/2025 End Date: 21/04/2026

Further Information

I am the module leader for ‘Neo-Victorianism: Contemporary Literature and Culture’. I have co-led the MA English Literature module, ‘Dark Tourism: Urban Underworlds and Modern City Spaces’ and contribute to ‘Literature and Adaptation’ and 'Gothic Stories.'

In previous years, I was the module leader for ‘Concepts in Criticism and Culture’, and I offered lectures and seminars on ‘Textual Studies (Modernism and Modernity)’. I also led the third-year module on ‘James Joyce's Ulysses’.

I welcome PhD students in Neo-Victorianism, modern and contemporary fiction, Irish studies, and subcultures.

Qualifications