BSc (Hons.) MRes (Dist.) AFHEA, PhD.

In 2016, I took up a postdoctoral research fellowship at St Anne's College, Oxford to join the Diseases of Modern Life project. My new research project, heavily influenced by the burgeoning field of microbiome studies, is concerned with changing understandings of gastrointestinal health throughout the nineteenth century. I am particularly interested in the interdisciplinary construction of digestive health and its relationships with somatic, immune, and psychiatric wellbeing. How might analysing these constructions at a time when our concepts of identity were being forged in relation to developing modernity, modify our perspectives on what it means to be healthy in the twenty-first century?

From May - October 2016 I was an Early Career Fellow with the Institute of Advanced Study. Before this I completed my PhD with the English and Comparative Literary Studies department funded by the Wolfson Foundation. I joined the university in 2012, after having completed a BSc (Biology and English, First Class Honours) and a Masters by Research (Distinction) at Keele University. My masters thesis entitled: 'A Parasite By Any Other Name: Depictions of Parasitism in Nineteenth Century Medicine, Literature and Culture' explored the figure of the parasite as a cultural symbol informed by both biology and historical religious practices.

My doctoral project entitled: 'Miasmas, Mosquitoes and Microscopes: Parasitology and the British Literary Imagination, 1885-1935' analyses significant exchanges between parasitology and British literary culture in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I am particularly interested in the impact of parasitic disease on cultural understandings of British imperialism and the pressures (both medical and social) that led to the establishment of parasitology as a branch of tropical medicine.

Other research interests include: Victorian Studies, Romantic and Gothic Fiction, Fin de Siecle Literature and Culture, Popular Science Writing, Infectious Disease Narratives, and Darwinism.

My Research

I am part of the department of English and Comparative Literary Studies and work in collaboration with the Centre for the History of Medicine. My research includes a broad range of sources from scientists' and doctors' research diaries, personal narratives and colonial office correspondance, to travel writing, news reports and popular fiction. Exploring the cultural framing of disease in conjuction with notions of colonial geographies, I attempt to elucidate the public understanding of British Imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. I am particularly interested in the figure of the native as a source of social and somatic anxiety and ways of thinking about the 'tropical' colonial environment as one of parasites and vectors. Prominent figures in my research include Ronald Ross, Patrick Manson, and Mary Kingsley.

Publications

Taylor-Brown, Emilie, 'Petty Larceny' and 'Manufactured Science': Nineteenth-Century Parasitology and the Politics of Replication' in Replication in the Long Nineteenth Century: Re-makings eds. Julie Codell and Linda K. Hughes (accepted by Edinburgh University Press)

Taylor-Brown, Emilie, ‘Exploring Victorian Travel Literature: Disease, Race and Climate, by Jessica Howell, Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture’ Studies in Travel Writing (2016) DOI: 10.1080/13645145.2016.1212506.

Taylor-Brown, Emilie, ‘She has a Parasite Soul!” The Pathologization of the Social Monster as Parasitic Hybrid in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Richard Marsh’s The Beetle, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Parasite’’ in Monsters and Monstrosity from the Fin de Siecle to the Millenium: New Essays eds. Sharla Hutchison and Rebecca A. Brown (Jefferson: McFarland Press, 2015)

Taylor-Brown, Emilie, ‘(Re)Constructing the Knights of Science: Parasitologists and their Literary Imaginations’ Journal of Literature and Science 14(2014)2 pp.62-79.

Taylor-Brown, Emilie, 'Death, Disease and Discontent: The Monstrous Reign of the Super-Virus' in Unnatural Reproductions and Monstrosity: The Birth of the Monster in Literature, Film, and Media eds. Andrea Wood and Brandy Schillace (New York: Cambria Press, 2014)

Taylor-Brown, Emilie, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Parasite? ‘The Crimson Horror’ and Victorian Social Angst in BBC’s Dr Who’ Journal of Victorian Culture Online, 20 May 2013 <http://blogs.tandf.co.uk/jvc/2013/05/20/whos-afraid-of-the-big-bad-parasite-the-crimson-horror-and-victorian-social-angst-in-bbcs-dr-who/>

Taylor-Brown, E. and Hurd, H. ‘The First Suicides: a Legacy Inherited by Parasitic Protozoans from Prokaryote Ancestors’ Parasites and Vectors 6(2013)108 pp.1-14.

Taylor-Brown, Emilie, 'Student Byron Conference: 'Byron Now' Edge Hill University. 23 May 2012' The Byron Journal 40(2012)2 pp.171-74.

Invited talks and Roundtable/Workshop Participation

Roundtable: ‘Replicas and Replication in the Victorian Age’ Victorian’s Institute Conference, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC. 14-16 October 2016.

Respondent for Prof. Pamela Gilbert, Interdisciplinary Workshop on Emotions for Institute of Advanced Teaching and Learning, University of Warwick 16 May 2016.

'Poets, Prophets, Pioneers: The Emergent Taxonomy of the Celebrity-Scientist in Late-Nineteenth Century Britain' Research Seminar Series. Keele University 5 Nov 2014.

'From Comic Sycophant to Gothic Monster: Reflections on the Literary Parasite' Arts & Humanities Discussion Group. St Anne's College, University of Oxford 21 Nov 2013.

Conferences

I blog about my research and related interests at: VictorianParasites

My Academia.edu profile can be found here.

Dr. Emilie
Taylor-Brown

E dot A dot V dot Taylor-Brown at warwick dot ac dot uk
 
Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Humanities Building
University of Warwick
Gibbet Hill Rd
Coventry CV4 7AL

Supervisor: Dr. Emma Francis
Mentor: Dr. Ross Forman
External Advisor: Dr. Roberta Bivins