Professor
Professor Helen Groth
Bachelor of Arts, 1st Class Hons, University of Sydney
PhD, University of Cambridge
Arts,Design & Architecture
School of the Arts and Media
I am an expert on the history of literature, with particular expertise in nineteenth-century literature, literary sound studies, and literature & photography. My current book projects explore aspects of literature's enduring engagement with riotous activity. My monograph Riotous Lives and Literary Writing is in progress and a co-edited collection Writing the Global Riot. Literature in a Time of Crisis is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2023. I am also co-editing (with Julian Murphet) The Edinburgh Companion to Sound & Literary Studies, forthcoming with Edinburgh University Press in 2023.
After completing my PhD at the University of Cambridge, I taught at the University of Exeter before returning to Australia where I have held positions at the University of Melbourne, Macquarie University, and an Australian Research Council Fellowship at the University of Sydney. I came to UNSW in 2010 to take up an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2010-2014) in the School of Arts and Media. I am a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and was Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences from 2017-2019.
I am the sole author of 2 books Victorian Photography and Literary Nostalgia (Oxford University Press, 2003/2004) and Moving Images. Nineteenth-Century Reading and Screen Practices (Edinburgh University Press, 2013), as well as the co-author of a third monograph (with Natalya Lusty), Dreams and Modernity. A Cultural History (Routledge, 2013). The latter research on dreams and the history of the science of mind was funded by an ARC Discovery Grant (2010-2013). I have also coedited a number of books and special issues of journals including a special issue of Textual Practice ‘On Anachronism’ (2012), Sounding Modernism (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), and Mindful Aesthetics. Literature and the Science of Mind (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).
My recent research on rioting and the literary archive is funded by an Australian Research Council Grant (2018-2021).
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (with Jumana Bayeh and Julian Murphet) 2018-2021
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (with Natalya Lusty) 2010 - 2013
Australian Research Council Future Fellow, University of New South Wales 2010 - 2014
Macquarie University Research Development Grant 2006 - 2009
Australian Research Council Fellow, University of Sydney 1998 - 2001
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant 2003 - 2005
Macquarie Early Career Research Grant 2005.
University Medal, University of Sydney, 1991.
Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship, 1991-1996.
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2016.
Dean's Award for Outstanding Research Leadership, 2019.
International Association of University Professors of English (IAUPE), member
Australasian Victorian Studies Association, member.
North American Victorian Studies Association, member.
Modern Languages Association, member.
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Judging Panel, for Voss Literary Prize, 2015.
Australasian Association of Literature, co-founding member and Vice-President 2007 - 2010
Australasian Association of Literature, co-founding member and President 2010 - 2014
Founding Executive member of the AUHE - Australian Heads of English 2012 - 2016.
Member of Editorial Board, Victoriographies, (Edinburgh University Press)
Member of Editorial Board, Cogent Arts & Humanities (Routledge)
Member of the Editorial Board, Affirmations, 2014 - 2017
My Research Supervision
Recent HDR completions as Primary Supervisor are:
Penelope Hone, Voice and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Awarded 2016)
Jayne Chapman, Hand and Mechanical Reproduction in Nineteenth-Century Poetry (Awarded 2017)
Clare Caldwell, Adolescent Masculinity in Twentieth-Century American Young Adult Fiction. (Awarded 2018)
Katherine Sumner, Thomas Chatterton and the performance of literary professionalism (Awarded 2020)
Elizabeth Drumm, Precarity and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Awarded 2021)
Patricia May, Reading domestic spaces in the writing of Virginia Woolf. (Awarded 2021)
Chunhui Lu, Virginia Woolf: Representing 'Life Itself'. (Awarded 2023)
My Teaching
Current Teaching (2022/23)
ARTS3048 Gothic Cultures
ARTS1031 Reading Through Time
ARTS3039 Jane Austen & her Contexts