Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Winnie The Pooh Hires Research Staff

Originally published - 20 July 1999

He may have a very small brain but Pooh Bear is making it possible for the University of Warwick's Writing Programme to develop two new projects in research and teaching. A.A. Milne left a share of the copyright in the four main Winnie the Pooh books - including the now hugely lucrative merchandising rights - to the Royal Literary Fund (RLF), which supports established writers in need of financial help and also has an educational brief. The RLF has now agreed to fund two new posts in the University of Warwick's Writing Programme from this autumn.

The first is a full-time two-year post-doctoral appointment to carry out research into standards of literacy, particularly in writing, among students in the upper ?chelon of British universities: what we should expect of them, both when they arrive at university and by the time they leave, and how skills in writing are best taught at this level. The project, under the joint direction of Professor Jeremy Treglown of Warwick's English Department and Professor David Wray of Warwick's Institute of Education, will be carried out by Dr Lisa Ganobscik-Williams who has extensive experience of both teaching and research in expository writing in US universities.

The second post, is a resident fellowship for an established writer, enabling her to pursue her own work while being available to advise students on their writing skills. The holder at Warwick will be Carole Angier, prize-winning biographer of the Caribbean novelist Jean Rhys. At Warwick she will be finishing a book on Primo Levi and teaching in conjunction with already established projects of the Writing Programme.

For further details please contact:

Professor Jeremy Treglown, Warwick Writing Programme
Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies
University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL
Tel: 0171 267 8142