Local Youth Engagement Project, established November 2014.

Aided by funding from Hefce UnLtd, my colleague Orlagh McCabe and I work with local high schools and community groups. We offer interactive history, literature and culture workshops which investigate and record how ideas of citizenship, gender equality and enfranchisement affect the lives of young people in and around Crewe today, with particular emphasis on how young people identify themselves as politically dis/enfranchised and how they prepare for their first experiences of voting.

The workshops’ content is inspired by the life and writings of suffragist Ada Nield Chew who came to national attention following her letter writing campaign to the Crewe Chronicle in the 1890s. The project itself was inspired by the forthcoming centenary of The Representation of the People Act (1918) which granted (some) women the right to vote for the first time.

We also offer the workshop to adult learners and community groups and we have taken the workshop to The Children’s Rights Society’s ‘International Children’s Rights Conference’, hosted by MMU Cheshire in November 2015.

The project also incorporates a Community Conference, a Mitchell and Kenyon ‘Crewe on Film’ Open Night, appearance at ‘Women of WW1/ International Woman’s Day event’ (People’s History Museum, 2 March 2016).

The project website and blog can be found at http://www.localyouthengagement.org/

And on twitter @lye_Crewe

Academic Publications

OUP Special Issue Article: ‘Experimental Aesthetics and the shared life-writing of Vernon Lee and Clementina Anstruther-Thomson’ in Special Issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies Journal on ‘Co-Constructions of Self: Nineteenth-Century Collaborative Life-Writing’. Ed Lynn M. Linder April 2016.

Special Issue Journal Article: ‘Alice and Viola Meynell: Mothering, Mentorship and Modernism’ Women’s Writing Special Issue on “Generations” Eds. Doreen Thierauf and Lauren Pinkerton (Routledge Press, winter 2017) 2018

Book Chapter: ‘Besant and Collaborative Practice in Theory’ in Walter Besant: The Business of Literature and the Pleasures of Reform Ed by Kevin Morrison University of Liverpool Press, 2019

Special Issue Journal Article: ‘Ada Nield Chew: Radicalisation and Professionalization, 1894-1900’ in Victorians: Journal of Culture and Literature Special Issue on ‘Women of the Press in the 1890s’, Eds. Deborah Logan, Clare Horrocks and Alyson Hunt. Winter 2017/18 7000 words (formerly Victorian Newsletter, Ohio University Press, now in its 65th year).

Book Chapter: ‘The New Woman in her Confinement: Fin de siècle constructions of Maternity and Motherhood’ in Intersections of Gender, Class and Race in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond, Ed. Barbara Leonardi, Palgrave MacMillan, Winter 2018. 

Case Study in Book: ‘Feminism, the Vote and Youth Engagement: A Cheshire Case Study’ for Feminism and Museums: Intervention, Disruption and Change, edited by Jenna Ashton, Published by Museums Etc., March 2018. 2000 words. 

Entry for ‘Companion’: “Victorian Popular Collaboration” 850 word entry in The Companion to Victorian Popular Fiction Ed. Prof. Kevin Morrison (McFarland, Winter 2017) 850 words

‘England’s Forgotten Suffragist’ in BBC History Extra Magazine (21 Dec 2016) http://www.historyextra.com/article/bbc-history-magazine/england%E2%80%99s-forgotten-suffragist

“’The imprint of what-has-been’: Arthur Quiller-Couch, Daphne du Maurier and the writing of Castle Dor”, Journal of Cornish Studies. Series 2, Number 21 (University of Exeter Press, November 2013)

“Mary Cholmondeley’s Dreams of Futurity in Votes for Men (1909) and ‘The Dark Cottage’ (1919)” Mary Cholmondeley Reconsidered. Eds. Carolyn Oulton and SueAnn Schatz (Pickering and Chatto, November 2009 

“’The Very Stage and Theatre of our Dramatic Happiness’: Scenes from Michael Field’s Rottingdean” The Michaelian, Vol. 1 (2009) 

“Victorian Literary and Cultural Contexts” co-authored with Rhian Williams, in The Victorian Literature Handbook. Eds. Alexandra Warwick and Martin Willis (London: Continuum Press, 2008).  pp 44-88.

Novels (as Kiley Dunbar): 

One Summer’s Night (Hera book and audible audiobook, 2019)

Christmas at Frozen Falls (Hera Books and Saga Egmont audiobook, Sept 2019)

Summer at the Highland Coral Beach (Hera Books and Saga Egmont audiobook, March 2020)

One Winter’s Night (Hera Books and Saga Egmont audiobook, Sept 2020) Shortlisted for the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel Award 2021

The Borrow a Bookshop Holiday (May 2021, Hera Canelo)

Matchmaking at Port Willow (Hera Books and Saga Egmont audiobook, Sept 2021)

Christmas at the Borrow a Bookshop (Sept 2022)

Borrow a Bookshop Book III (Spring 2023)

Primary Research Specialism: English Literature 1880s-1910s especially:

Radical Suffrage/The life and Work of Ada Nield Chew,

North of England Suffrage/tte networks,

Collaborative writing/Literary Relationships,

Women’s Writing/Feminism,

Aesthetics,

Archival Research,

Authorship Theory,

Also, new work on popular contemporary romance writing forthcoming

Media appearances or involvement

BBC History Extra Magazine (21 Dec 2016) ‘Ada Nield Chew: England’s Forgotten Suffragist’, an essay by Kirsty Bunting and Orlagh McCabe: http://www.historyextra.com/article/bbc-history-magazine/england%E2%80%…