Amanda Dillon

I began my academic career as a literary scholar before moving into history in 2013. I received my PhD in literature, drama and creative writing in 2012 at UEA, working on genre, postmodernism, and literary theory. I completed UEA's now defunct Studies in Fiction MA in 2008, and my disseration was on Gothic fiction, Shirley Jackson, and the postmodern and I retain interests in these areas as well as early modern fictional representations of alchemy.

I teach largely on Victorian Britain and visual representations of history. My main historical interests lie in the creation of historical narratives and historical theory, Victorian popular entertainment, and sex and gender in the Victorian period more broadly. I would be happy to supervise BA and MA disserations on any of these and connected topics. My interests and teaching approaches are intensely interdisciplinary. I welcome PhD applicants on interdiscplinary aspects of these topics, as well as on my literary specialisms. 

A significantly updated version of my PhD thesis was comissioned as a book for Liverpool University Press as Metafiction and Narrative Worlds in Science Fiction: 'Prism, Mirror, Lens'. It was published in December 2025. Though I mostly work in history these days, I remain with a foot firmly rooted in each discipline, and future research projects include shorter work on Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, and the Star Trek reboot and world-building. My next book-length project ties together both disciplines and will be a study of woman-authored, woman-centred time travel narratives that work as 'alternate histories'. 

In addition to my teaching in history, I also occasionally moonlight in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at UEA on various modules relevant to my research interests. 

My key research interests, in both history and literature, have to do with the interaction between narrative and the world. I am fascinated by the use of language and imagery to create worlds (whether fictional or historical), and see this as essential to our writing of history. I am also interested, broadly, in the arcane and the offbeat, particuarly where it intersects with these questions of world and narrative creation.

Specifically, my research interests are:

History: late Victorian Britain, the Victorian music hall and theatre, Victorian sex and sexuality, the Victorian asylum, penny dreadfuls/penny bloods/etc.; women in Victorian society and more broadly; feminism; historical theory (especially postmodernism); film and history; and medical humanities

Literature: genre (science fiction, fantasy, the gothic, the romance, historical fiction, time travel fiction), literary theory, metafictionality, postmodernism; narratology; reader-response theory; world building; possible worlds theory; the representation of alchemy and related subjects in early modern fiction; film and literature

I have taught across a wide variety of modules related to my research interests:

History:

HIS-4003A - Introduction to Modern History

HIS-4005B - The Holocaust in History (defunct)

HIS-4006B - The Age of Extremes

HIS-4007B - Visual(ising) History

HIS-4008B - History, Controversy and Debate (module organiser) (defunct)

HIS-4013B - Doing History (module organiser)

HIS-5012A - Victorian Britain

HIS-5055B - Women, Power and Politics II

HIS-5104A - Love, Desire, and Sexuality in History (Module Organiser)

HIS-6026A - Victorian Underworlds

HIS-6070Y - We are Not Amused

HIS-6107A - The Way It Wasn't: Historical Fiction and History (module organiser)

HIS-7024Y - Historical Research Skills: Demystifying Academic Publishing

HIS-7025Y - Specialist Tutorials: Women, Fiction, and (Re)Writing History 

Literature:

LDCL-4008A - Literature in History I

LDCL-6116/17B - New Worlds: Science Fiction and Beyond

Foundation Year:

History and Society

Key Concepts

History

Victorian social history

Victorian sexuality

19th C 'women's history'

Victorian entertainments

history of psychiatry/ Victorian asylums

history of sexuality

historical fiction

historical theory

historical film

Literature

genre studies

science fiction

fantasy

romance

gothic fiction

narratology

postmodernism

world-building

literary theory

historical fiction

time travel

metafiction