Life Story
Joan is a writer, researcher, and broadcaster specialising in Gothic and horror literature, television and film. She got her PhD defining Cornish Gothic literature from the University of Exeter in 2020, funded by the AHRC South, West, and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. She has taught at the University of Bristol since 2016 where she is now a Senior Lecturer, running courses and supervising PhD students on Gothic literature. Joan is a South East Londoner who lives in Bristol with her husband and their two cats, Lilith and Magnus.
Joan researches the representation of seas and coasts in literature and culture and is an expert on nineteenth-century Cornwall. Their other research interests include Victorian literature, the Gothic from the eighteenth century to the present, and the works of Ann Radcliffe, Wilkie Collins, Shirley Jackson, and Daphne du Maurier.
Their first monograph, Cornish Gothic 1830-1913, was released by University of Wales Press in 2023 and short listed for the International Gothic Association’s Allan Lloyd Smith Prize. She is writing her second monograph, Queer Ecologies of the Gothic, and preparing a trade book proposal on how the stories we tell about the sea have shaped British identity.
Joan writes for The Conversation on topics including Victorian tourism, Daphne du Maurier’s Cornwall, and the figure of the Black vampire.
Haunted Shores Network
Joan is one of the co-leaders of the Haunted Shores Network, providing opportunities for research, collaboration and dissemination for scholars and practitioners working on coasts and shores as anxious, politicised, and radical spaces.
Public Engagement
Joan has contributed to BBC Free Thinking and The Essay and has spoken live at Hay Festival and The Proms, on topics including oceans, Cornwall, the penny dreadful, pirates, and agoraphobia. They have presented interval shows for The Proms 2023 from Wales and Cornwall, and Proms 2024 from Bristol.
Teaching
Alongside her literary scholarship Joan researches pedagogy and teaching in higher education, with a particular interest in AI in the literature classroom and neurodivergence in the arts and humanities.
Work with me
I am always looking for opportunities to collaborate on public engagement, research, and writing projects, and open to prospective PhD students. Please get enough if you would like to work together. I love speaking on podcasts, in schools, and at events.
Joan Passey 