School of English

This page shows the staff for the University of Nottingham's School of English in the UK. Please see here for the School of Education and English in China and the School of English in Malaysia.

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James Moran

Professor of Modern English Literature and Drama, Faculty of Arts

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Expertise Summary

MA (Cambridge), PhD (Cambridge)

Teaching Summary

I have held a number of administrative roles within the School of English at Nottingham. I have been director of research, deputy-head of school, senior tutor, and head of drama and creative writing.… read more

Research Summary

My research is primarily concerned with modern anglophone literature, and I have a particular interest in the theatre of twentieth-century Ireland and Britain.

My most recent books have examined topics including modern tragedy, fake news, and theatrical modernism. I am currently editing a volume about the playwright Sean O'Casey for Cambridge University Press.

I have had the pleasure of supervising the work of a number of excellent PhD students and would welcome applications from those whose interests broadly intersect with my own. My former research students include Sam Haddow (lecturer in modern and contemporary drama, University of St Andrews), Soudabeh Ananisarab (lecturer in drama, Birmingham City University), Joseph Anderton (lecturer in English literature, Birmingham City University), and Yaqing Xie (lecturer in English, Beijing Normal University). I have recently supervised students working on theses entitled 'Franz Fanon: A Theatre of Embodiment', 'Broadcast Shakespeare from the 1980s to the Present', 'Representing the rural: new rural imaginaries on the twenty-first century British stage'; 'A modernist vision of Chinoiserie: The Bloomsbury Group's Chinese Taste'; and 'The cultural imagination of the working class: re-examining Lawrence, Sillitoe and Meadows'.

I have held a number of administrative roles within the School of English at Nottingham. I have been director of research, deputy-head of school, senior tutor, and head of drama and creative writing. I also worked as lead for one of Nottingham University's five 'Global Research Themes' (you can read about that here: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/inspiring-people/cc/james-moran.aspx).

In 2024-25 I will be a visiting fellow at Harvard University and at the University of Maynooth; in 2022 I was a visiting lecturer at the University of New Mexico; and in 2019 I was visiting research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. I am a recipient of the British Academy mid-career fellowship, I have been awarded the Philip Leverhulme prize, and I've been a member of the collaborative board of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.

Outside the academy, I enjoy giving lectures and seminars for a range of different organisations, including the Royal National Theatre, where I've delivered sessions with figures including the actor Anne-Marie Duff, playwright Enda Walsh, theatre director Wayne Jordan, and screenwriter William Ivory. I've directed theatre works including the US premiere of D.H. Lawrence's play 'Altitude' at the Taos Center for the Arts.

I am also regularly involved with the broadcast media: I've appeared, for example, on episodes of BBC TV's Who Do You Think You Are? with Minnie Driver and with Ian McKellen, and my most longstanding broadcasting commitment is the monthly book-review feature on BBC Radio Nottingham that I delivered from 2010 until 2020.

Past Research

I have produced books on a number of different topics. These volumes include:

-Forms of Drama: Modern Tragedy (Bloomsbury, 2023)

-The Theatre of Fake News (Anthem, 2022)

-Modernists and the Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2022)

-George Bernard Shaw: Playlets (as editor: Oxford University Press, 2021)

-The Theatre of D.H. Lawrence (Bloomsbury, 2015)

-Sean O'Casey, The Silver Tassie (intro: Faber, 2014)

-Regional Modernisms (as co-editor, with Neal Alexander: Edinburgh University Press, 2013)

-The Theatre of Sean O'Casey (Bloomsbury, 2013)

-Irish Birmingham: A History (Liverpool University Press, 2010)

-Four Irish Rebel Plays (as editor: Irish Academic Press, 2007)

-Staging the Easter Rising (Cork University Press, 2005)

School of English

Trent Building
The University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 951 5900
email: english-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk