Key Note Speakers

Prof. David Amigoni  (Keele University)

Professor of Victorian Literature at Keele University, David Amigoni's research interests include: Victorian Life Writing and Biographies, Science and its relations to Literature, Charles Darwin's evolutionary writings and the expansion of the British Empire in relation to Victorian Literary Culture. He has published on a wide range of topics and authors including: John Addington Symonds, William Wordsworth and Thomas Carlyle. His latest research project entitled 'Ages and Stages: the place of theatre in representations and recollections of ageing' is an interdisciplinary initiative in collaboration with the New Victoria Theatre in Newcastle-Under-Lyme concerning representations of ageing and the role of the Stoke-On-Trent's theatre in the lives of people living and working in the Potteries in the last forty years. It is funded under the New Dynamics of Ageing Cross Cultural Research Panel.

Prof. Sharon Ruston (University of Salford)

Professor of Nineteenth Century Literature and Culture at the University of Salford and lead-investigator in the AHRC-funded doctoral training programme 'Theories and Methods: Literature, Science and Medicine', Sharon Ruston's research interests are situated in Science and Medicine in the Romantic Period 1780-1820. She has researched and published on a wide range of topics including Shelley and Vitality, William Godwin and Mesmerism and Humphrey Davy's interest in the Sublime. She is also head of Salford's Literature, Culture and Science Research Cluster and organises the North-West Long-Nineteenth Century Seminar Series.

Prof. Joanna Verran (MMU)

Professor of Microbiology at Manchester Metropolitan Univerisity, Joanna Verran has research interests in Biofilms, Microbiology Education and Oral Microbiology. She has an impressive profile for public engagement, winning the Society for General Microbiology Peter Wildy Prize for Microbiology Education in 2006 and the National Award for the Public Understanding of Science in July 2011 for her innovative use of art to enrich microbiology education. She also founded the Bad Bugs Book Club which aims to get people interested in science by reading fiction.