Professor Helen Groth | UNSW Research

My Expertise

I am an expert on the history of literature, with particular expertise in nineteenth-century literature, literary sound studies, and literature & photography.

Here I am discussing German author Roland Schimmelpfennig's novel One Clear Ice-Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century on The Bookshelf on Radio National:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/the-bookshelf/

More recently I have commented on the attack on Salman Rushdie drawing on my current research on riots and literary writing:

https://humanities.org.au/power-of-the-humanities/literary-freedom-and-political-violence-thoughts-on-salman-rushdies-attack/

Here is a link to my recent article in The Conversation on George Eliot's extraordinary novel Middlemarch:

https://theconversation.com/george-eliots-middlemarch-egoism-moral-stupidity-and-the-complex-web-of-life-201376

Fields of Research (FoR)

Literary studies, British and Irish Literature

Biography

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 recently published co-edited collection Writing the Global Riot. Literature in a Time of Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2023) draws together scholars from across the globe to consider the various ways writers over time and in different contexts have shaped cultural perceptions of the riot as a distinctive form of political and social expression. The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Sound Studies, co-edited with Julian Murphet, has also recently been published by Edinburgh University Press in 2024.

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 monographs 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 book (with Natalya Lusty), Dreams and Modernity. A Cultural History (Routledge, 2013; pb 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 other books and special issues of journals, including a special issue of Textual Practice ‘On Anachronism’ (2012), Mindful Aesthetics. Literature and the Science of Mind (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013; pb 2014), a special issue of JASAL on 'Critical Soundings. Voice, Space, and Sound in Australian Literature' (2015), and Sounding Modernism (Edinburgh University Press, 2017; pb 2017).

My recent research on rioting and the literary archive is funded by an Australian Research Council Grant (2018-2021).

My Grants

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.

My Qualifications

Bachelor of Arts, 1st Class Hons, University of Sydney

PhD, University of Cambridge

My Awards

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.

My Research Supervision

Areas of supervision

Areas of HDR supervision:

Nineteenth & Twentieth-Century Literature
Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture
Literary Sound Studies
Literature and the Science of Mind
Gothic and Popular Fiction

Currently supervising

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 Engagement

Australasian Victorian Studies Association, member.
North American Victorian Studies Association, member.
Modern Languages Association, member.

International Association of University Professors of English (IAUPE), member

Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities 2016 -
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, Southerly, 2024 -
Member of Editorial Board, Victoriographies, (Edinburgh University Press)
Member of Editorial Board, Cogent Arts & Humanities (Routledge)
Member of the Editorial Board, Affirmations, 2014 - 2017